Tree Service in Esther Short, WA

Start with what is underneath. Around the park and down toward the waterfront, much of what looks like ground is not — it is a planter, a courtyard or a landscaped deck built over a parking level, with a measured depth of soil and a waterproof membrane below it. The tree on top has exactly the root room somebody specified on a drawing years ago, and not an inch more.

That single fact explains most of the calls from these blocks. Trees that stall out, lean off plumb, circle a planter until they strangle themselves, or come loose in a wind that would not have moved them in a yard.

Half the Trees Down Here Are Growing on a Roof

On a structural slab the work changes. Anchor points get chosen for what is under them as much as what is above, we keep load off the deck instead of stacking wood on it, and we ask the building for as-builts before assuming anything about depth or drainage. Removals over structure come out in small pieces lowered onto a hard surface, which is slower than felling and priced accordingly. It is also the only way to avoid handing an association a roofing bill on top of a tree bill.

The Calendar Runs These Blocks

The park has something happening in it through most of the year — market weekends, concerts, the Fourth. The park itself is the city’s to manage, but the hotels, offices, towers and associations ringing it all work around that same calendar, and so do we. Booking a lift and a parking lane on a market Saturday is not realistic. Early weekday starts and the quieter stretch of winter are. Tell us the constraint at the estimate and we build the day around it.

Wind Off the River Finds the Open Corners

Downtown is not uniformly sheltered. The park is a wide opening in an otherwise built-up grid, the waterfront blocks face straight into the Columbia, and the gaps between taller buildings speed up whatever is already moving. Young plaza and courtyard trees planted in the last several years take the worst of it: leaning out of plumb, nursery ties left on until they cut into the bark, root balls rocking loose in the pit. Most of that is fixable while the tree is small, and not afterward.

• Clearance and structural pruning for condominium courtyards, hotel frontages and office plazas
• Corrective work on young trees — removing ties and stakes, straightening, early structural cuts
• Piece-by-piece removal of trees in planters and over podium decks
• Written condition reports for boards and property managers ahead of a vote or a budget cycle
• Storm response on blocks that have to be open and clear before business the next morning