Tree Service in Fircrest, WA

The houses on these streets have not grown an inch since. The trees have gone up by a factor of four or five, and closing that gap is most of the work we do in Fircrest.

Very little of it is leftover native forest. It is planted landscape, chosen off a short nursery list in one decade, and it is coming due all at once.

The Blue Spruce Was Never Going to Be Happy Here

Colorado blue spruce belongs to cold, dry, high country. Western Washington hands it a long cool wet spring instead, which is exactly the weather needle-cast fungi want. The tree sheds needles from the inside out and the bottom up until what is left is a skirt of bare grey branches under a green shell.

No pruning fixes that, because spruce will not push new growth on bare old wood. Fungicide programs exist, but they have to be timed to the new flush and repeated for years, and on a tree this size that is rarely worth it. Live with the shape or replace the tree — we will tell you which we would do.

A Fast Maple Grows Faster Than It Grows Strong

The other signature of this era is a soft maple planted for quick shade, and it delivered. What it also built is a set of tight upright forks with bark folded down inside the seam, and that seam is where these trees come apart. What lets go is not a twig. It is a third of the crown, landing on whatever the tree was planted to shade.

Plenty of them are still keepers. A maple with a sound trunk and one suspect union can be reduced for end weight and cabled, and that buys real years. One that has already torn, or has decay running down from an old topping cut, is a different conversation.

Patio Covers, Carports and Everything Else That Breaks

Ranch houses came with add-ons. Aluminum patio covers, carports, a lean-to greenhouse, a shed on the back fence, a fiberglass sunroom roof somebody added later. All of it sits under the canopy and none of it takes a limb well. Back yards here back onto other back yards, so the chip truck stays at the curb and brush comes out through a side gate by hand.

• Removing spruce that has thinned past the point of recovering
• End-weight reduction and cabling on maples with included-bark forks over the house
• Sweetgum crown cleaning, or removal where the roots have taken the walkway
• Grinding sixty-year stumps close to foundations, walkways and old irrigation lines
• Storm calls where a leader has torn out onto a roof, photographed for your insurer

None of that gets priced off a photograph. Ryan walks the yard, looks at the forks and at what is sitting underneath them, and tells you what needs doing this year.