Tree Pruning Service

What Pruning Actually Means

“Trimming” is not one job. The industry standard — ANSI A300, the specification every ISA-certified arborist works to — separates it into four different operations, and the difference between them is the difference between a tree that recovers and one that never does.

• Crown cleaning — removing dead, dying, diseased and broken wood. The lowest-risk work there is, and usually what a tree needs most.
• Crown thinning — selectively removing live branches to let wind and light through the canopy without changing its shape or size.
• Crown raising — lifting the lower limbs for clearance over a roof, a driveway or a footpath.
• Crown reduction — shortening the canopy back to living lateral branches. This is the one people mean when they say they want a tree “taken down a bit”, and it is covered in more detail on our crown reduction page.

The 25% Rule

ANSI A300 sets a ceiling: no more than 25% of a tree’s live canopy should come off in a single season. Past that, the tree stops behaving like a tree that is being maintained and starts behaving like a tree under attack — throwing out water sprouts and epicormic shoots along the trunk and main limbs to replace the foliage it just lost.

That regrowth is fast, weakly attached and dense. It is how an over-pruned tree ends up needing more work every year instead of less.

Why We Will Not Top a Tree

It also does not do what people think. A topped tree does not stay short. Within about five years the water-sprout regrowth is typically taller than the original canopy, and every stub cut left behind is an open decay entry point that the tree cannot seal properly. You end up with a taller tree, weaker attachments, an uglier shape, and rot working its way down the trunk.

When someone wants height taken off a Douglas fir near a roofline, the right answer is nearly always a proper reduction back to lateral branches — or, if the tree is genuinely too close, a removal. Not a topping.

When to Prune in the Puget Sound

Timing matters more here than in drier climates, because our wet winters keep decay fungi active for most of the year. If the aim is to get ahead of winter storms, what to look for on your own trees in autumn is the place to start.

• Dormant season (late autumn to early spring) — best for most structural pruning on deciduous trees. The canopy is bare, the branch architecture is visible, and the tree puts its energy into sealing the wounds when it wakes up.
• Late spring and summer — better for cherries, plums and other stone fruit, which are far less likely to pick up bacterial canker and silver leaf when cut in dry weather.
• Any time — dead, broken or hazardous wood. That does not wait for a season.
• Avoid heavy pruning on oaks in spring and early summer.

How a Pruning Visit Runs

1. Free on-site assessmentAn ISA-certified arborist walks the tree with you, on the ground and from the canopy side, and says what the tree needs rather than what you asked for. If that is less work than you expected, we will say so.
2. A scope you can actually checkYou get the pruning type by name — cleaning, thinning, raising, reduction — and roughly how much canopy is coming off. Not “we will tidy it up”.
3. Climbing or aerial liftMost residential pruning is done on rope and saddle. Spikes are for removals, never for pruning a tree that is staying — they puncture the cambium.
4. Proper cutsOutside the branch collar, no flush cuts, no stubs. That is what lets the tree compartmentalise the wound and seal it.
5. Clean siteChips and brush out, ruts raked, gates shut.