Tree Service in Marrion, WA

These blocks filled in through the late sixties and the seventies on flat ground east of the old city, and the lots were sized for a house, a driveway and a back lawn. Once the fence went up there was one obvious place left to put anything green, and that is where it went: hard against the line, in a row, usually for privacy from the next yard or from the traffic on NE 18th.

Fifty-odd years later that decision is what we are dealing with. A screen of arborvitae has become a wall of splayed stems. A flowering plum planted on the corner pin has a limb over somebody else‘s shed. A single Douglas fir left in the corner of a quarter-acre lot now shades four back yards, and all four owners have an opinion about it.

Trees That Sit on the Property Line

The practical version people usually work from goes like this: if the trunk crosses the line, the tree belongs to both households, and neither one gets to remove it alone. Branches reaching over your side are generally yours to cut back to the line, but not in a way that kills or destabilizes the tree. That is a rough rule of thumb rather than legal advice, the details differ by situation, and a survey pin is worth more than either neighbor‘s memory of where the fence used to be.

What it means for us is simple. We will not take down a shared tree on one owner‘s say-so, and we will happily walk the estimate with both households standing there so nobody hears it secondhand. Half the time the disagreement ends once somebody points at the actual defect.

Screen Rows That Outgrew Their Job

Emerald arborvitae, Leyland cypress, laurel and the occasional row of Lombardy poplar all went in around here to buy some privacy, and they have all aged the same way. Sheared flat on the visible face for decades, they went bare and woody on the inside, and the first heavy wet snow splays the multiple leaders apart like a hand opening.

The honest part of this conversation is what comes back. Laurel and holly can be cut hard into old wood and will push again. Arborvitae and cypress will not — cut past the green and you have a brown fence post for the rest of its life. So a tired conifer hedge is usually a replace decision, not a prune decision, and we would rather tell you that before you pay us to shear it one more time.

• Removing failed arborvitae and cypress screen rows, roots and all, so a new fence or hedge can go in
• Reduction and clearance pruning on fence-line maples, plums and cherries overhanging a neighbor‘s roof
• Taking out single large firs that have outgrown a subdivision back corner
• Clearing blackberry, ivy and volunteer laurel out of the strip behind the fence
• Stump grinding where the machine has to come down a narrow side yard between two houses

The Soft Ground Toward Meadowbrook

Toward the marsh and the upper end of the Burnt Bridge Creek corridor the ground changes character. Oregon ash, alder and cottonwood take over from the planted stuff, they hold water at the roots most of the winter, and they fail differently — whole stems tipping out of soft soil rather than limbs breaking. If your back fence backs onto that green strip, the trees behind it are worth a look on a dry week rather than after a February front.