Tree Service in Longview Heights, WA

Longview Heights is where the planned grid gives out and the ground starts to lift. Streets bend instead of running square, the lots got wider, and the trees here are a different set of problems from the ones we handle six blocks downhill on the flat.

Cut and Fill Left Two Different Root Systems on One Lot

Most of this ground was graded before the houses went on it. The uphill side of a lot got scraped back toward hardpan and the spoil got pushed downhill to build a level pad. A fir or cedar left standing on the cut side lost part of its root plate to a machine decades ago and has been compensating ever since. A tree planted into the fill has all the soft soil it could want and nothing solid to grip.

Neither one looks like a problem in July. It shows up in February, when the fill side produces a leaner with a lifted lip of turf along the uphill edge, or when we open a root collar on the cut side and find decay walking in through roots that were severed during grading. If your lot has a bench, a terrace or a retaining wall in it, mention that when you call.

The Subdivision Planting List Is Coming Due

The ornamentals around these houses came off a short list that was popular when the neighborhoods were new, and almost none of them were picked for the size they would eventually reach.

• Birch dying back from the top after a run of dry summers, with borer damage in the upper stems
• Sweetgum and silver maple lifting sidewalks, driveway aprons and side sewer lines
• Flowering plum and cherry carrying decay from decades of being cut back to stubs
• Blue spruce browning from the inside out and dropping lower limbs onto a fence
• English holly and cherry laurel that started as a hedge and are now trees against the siding

Not all of it is removal work. Plenty of these trees have twenty good years left if the deadwood comes out and the end weight comes off the long limbs. We will tell you which category yours falls into, and we would rather prune a tree twice than sell you a removal you did not need.

Crane From the Street, or Rigged Out Over the Roof

Most Heights removals come down to that one decision. The tree is behind the house, the gate was built for a wheelbarrow, and there is no drop zone worth the name, so the wood leaves either in small pieces over the roofline or in big pieces lifted out to the street.

Rigging is cheaper by the hour and slower, and every piece passes over something you own. A crane costs more to bring but can turn two careful days into a morning and keeps the load off your roof entirely. Which one we recommend depends on street width, overhead lines, where outriggers can sit and what is underneath the tree.

Half the Pruning Up Here Is Repairing Old Topping Cuts

A lot of these trees have been topped at least once, usually by somebody with a ladder and a good price. Topping does not make a tree smaller for long. It forces a flush of weakly attached shoots out of the cut, and those shoots come back faster and heavier than what was taken off, anchored into wood that is already decaying behind the stub.

Restoration pruning is slower work and it is what these trees actually need. We pick the best-placed shoot on each old cut, take its competitors back, shorten what is overextended, and let the tree rebuild a structure it can carry. It takes more than one visit, and it is still cheaper than replacing a forty-year-old shade tree. Where a stem is already splitting at a tight union, cabling is often the honest alternative to removal.