Much of Holladay is established Salt Lake County housing sitting under a canopy that has had decades to close over the street and the rooflines. That canopy is a large…
Much of Holladay is established Salt Lake County housing sitting under a canopy that has had decades to close over the street and the rooflines. That canopy is a large part of why people want to live there, and it is also the thing most often ruined by one aggressive afternoon. A pruning plan for a tree like that should read as a short, specific list: dead limbs out, clearance from the roof and the driveway, a crossing limb resolved, weight taken off one long lateral. It should not read as a percentage. If nobody can tell you which limbs and why, that is worth a second opinion.
Every cut is a wound the tree has to seal over, so the count matters. Proper pruning takes a limb off at the branch collar, the slight swelling where the branch meets the stem, because that is where the tree is equipped to close the wound. Flush cuts and stubs both leave it worse off. On a big established tree, that discipline means fewer, better-chosen cuts, made where a climber can actually reach the right spot rather than wherever a pole saw happens to land. Restraint is not the crew going easy on you. It is most of what you are hiring.
Deadwood is normal. A tree sheds interior limbs it can no longer support, and out in a woodlot nobody would think about it twice. Over a driveway where cars park, a patio where people sit, or the walk to your front door, it is the one item on the list with a clock attached. Dead limbs come down on their own schedule, and along the Wasatch Front the usual trigger is wind or a heavy wet snow that loads a canopy with more weight than it was built to carry. Clearing deadwood above a target is the least controversial pruning there is.
You can do a fair amount of the looking yourself. Stand under the tree on a bright day and look up through it. Bare gray limbs with no fine twigs left on them, bark sloughing off a branch, a piece hung up in the canopy since the last storm: those are the ones to point out. Then note what sits beneath each one. A dead limb over the back fence is a different conversation from the same limb over the spot where the kids leave their bikes. Priorities fall out of that map far faster than out of a general discussion about the tree.
There is a temptation, once a crew is finally on site, to have them take plenty so you do not have to think about it again for a while. It rarely works out that way. Strip too much foliage and the tree answers with a rush of fast, weakly attached shoots, which means more mass in the wrong places and another visit sooner rather than later. A tree relieved of too much canopy at once is also carrying a wound load it never needed. The cheaper long game is a smaller, sharper list, revisited when the tree gives you a reason.
Timing belongs to the same restraint. What is right depends on the species and on what the pruning is meant to accomplish, and dormant-season work suits many trees well, when the structure is visible and the tree is not pushing new growth. Storm-broken and dead limbs are the exception; those come out whenever they are found. If a contractor tells you every tree on the property should be cut on the same schedule regardless of what it is, they are working from a calendar rather than from the tree standing in front of them.
It depends on the species and on the reason for the work. Dormant-season pruning suits many trees, since the structure is easy to read without leaves and the tree is not spending energy on new growth. Some species and some goals point elsewhere, so ask the crew to say why they are recommending a particular window. The exception is anything dead, broken, or hanging over something you care about. That comes out whenever it is found.
Less than most people expect, and the honest answer is that it depends on the tree's age, health, and species. What matters more is which limbs. A short list of well-chosen cuts made at the branch collar does more good than a large volume removed for the sake of a look. If your goal needs more than the tree should give up at once, a good crew will stage the work across visits instead of taking it all today.
Getting clearance is reasonable, yes. Limbs resting against siding or scraping in the wind wear at the tree and at whatever they are rubbing, and they hand squirrels an easy bridge. Clearance pruning is a modest, ordinary request. The thing to watch for is scope creep: you want the limbs that actually make contact dealt with, not the whole side of the tree flattened back to an imaginary line. Say plainly how much clearance you need.
Some trees do have to come down. How that goes is decided by access, by what sits underneath the tree, and by whether it can be dropped whole or has to be taken apart in pieces from the top down.
Learn more →Real pruning takes specific limbs off at the branch collar for a specific reason: clearance, deadwood, a rubbing branch. It does not mean shortening everything on the tree, and we match you with crews that know the difference.
Learn more →Wind and heavy wet snow leave limbs hanging over driveways, cars and doorways. That is the real urgency. You get crews who triage the hazard over your head first and worry about tidy cleanup second.
Learn more →Grinding is a separate operation from removal, with its own machine and its own gate-width problem. It also makes a startling volume of chips, so you should decide up front how deep it goes and where those chips end up.
Learn more →A lean, a split fork, mushrooms at the base, a strip of bark gone: the tree is telling you something. An assessment reads it honestly, and often the honest answer is that the tree is fine and should be left alone.
Learn more →Get the tree looked at by someone who will tell you to leave it alone.
Call 801-823-6018Describe the tree, what is under it, and what changed. We will take it from there.