Tree Service in Snohomish County, WA

Snohomish County runs from the saltwater bluffs at Edmonds and Mukilteo east to the ice on Glacier Peak. In between sit some of the fastest-growing suburbs in Washington, three working river valleys, and a great deal of second growth that was logged once and then left alone.

Tree failures here do not share a cause. The maple that drops a limb on a fence in Lynnwood and the fir that pulls a chunk of bluff down toward the tracks at Mukilteo are two different problems with two different fixes, and treating them the same is how people waste money.

Bluff Crests and Slide Ground

The shoreline from Edmonds through Mukilteo to north Everett is a marine bluff: permeable glacial outwash sitting on tighter silt and clay. Groundwater moves down through the coarse layer, hits the tight one, and runs out sideways at the face. That contact is where bluffs slough, and it is why the trees on the crest are doing structural work — holding the upper soil together and intercepting rain before it gets into the ground.

Taking those trees out for a view is a slope decision, not a landscaping decision. Many of these parcels fall inside mapped geologically hazardous areas, and the review process differs between cities and unincorporated county and changes over time. Confirm what applies to your address before anyone puts a rope in a tree. The Stillaguamish valley has its own long, documented history of large landslides, and the same caution applies on that ground.

What Actually Grows in the River Bottoms and on the Cutover Slopes

Most of the trouble we get called about in this county falls into four buckets, and they are worth knowing apart:

• Black cottonwood through the Snohomish, Skykomish and Stillaguamish bottoms — huge, fast, weak-wooded, and shedding limbs long before the crown looks sick
• Red alder on old cutover hillsides, much of it seeded in at the same time and now reaching the end of its span all at once
• Bigleaf maple with included bark at the main union, common along old pasture edges and fence lines
• Second-growth Douglas fir left standing in ones and twos when a subdivision went in, no longer sheltered by the stand it grew up inside

That last one drives more of the windthrow in this county than people realize. A fir grown in a closed stand is tall, small-crowned and braced by its neighbors. Clear the neighbors for lots and it has to stand alone in the first serious southwesterly, with a root plate that was never asked to do that.

The Highway 2 Corridor Has a Different Winter

Sultan, Gold Bar, Index and Baring — and Darrington up the Sauk — do not get lowland weather. They get wet snow that loads a crown until the top goes, then rain on top of the snow, then a hard east wind out of the Cascades. Hemlock snaps, cedar tops out, and the roads close. Anyone who tells you they will be up there fast in February is describing a plan, not a capability.

Cities and Communities in Snohomish County

Pick your city below for the local detail — soils, exposure, species mix and the rules that apply on your side of the county line.