Tree Service in Shumway, WA

This is some of the oldest platted ground in Vancouver outside the downtown core, and it was laid out with sidewalks, planting strips and a tree every so many feet. Whoever specified those trees picked one species and stuck with it down the run. A century on, that decision is still governing what happens on the block.

A Row of Trees the Same Age Comes Due Together

When one street maple starts shedding deadwood into the road, the neighbors two doors down usually are not far behind. Same species, same planting year, same restricted strip of soil, same decades of utility trenching through the root zone. We see it as a run, not as one tree, and we will tell you when the sensible plan is to prune four properties in the same week rather than treat yours as an isolated problem.

The species mix is of its era: Norway and silver maple, horse chestnut, black locust, the odd surviving elm, and English walnut in the back yards. Horse chestnut sheds big limbs and worries people more than it should. Locust drops wood constantly and is usually sound anyway. Elm is the one where a sudden summer wilt in the upper crown is worth a phone call the same week rather than the following spring.

Most of the Work Here Is Keeping Trees, Not Cutting Them

A hundred-year-old maple with an open codominant union is not automatically a removal. Reducing end weight off the heavy leads and, where the union is worth supporting, installing a cable can buy a great deal of time. What it cannot do is fix decay in the main stem, and we will say plainly when the tree is past the point where hardware is doing anything but delaying the inevitable.

• Crown cleaning and deadwood removal on mature street maples and chestnuts
• End-weight reduction and cabling on split-prone codominant unions
• Clearance pruning off slate and shake roofs, gutters and second-storey windows
• Written assessments when a lender, insurer or neighbor wants an opinion in writing
• Careful removals on lots where the drop zone is a porch on one side and a fence on the other

Fifty-Foot Lots and a Garage Off the Alley

There is not much room between these houses, and what room exists is often taken up by a porch, a hedge or a detached garage that was built for a smaller car. Almost everything comes down in pieces on rope. Where the alley is open we work from the alley, which is faster and cheaper for you. Where it has been fenced or built over, brush gets carried out the side of the house by hand, and that shows up in the estimate honestly rather than as a surprise on the invoice.