Marysville spreads across flat ground north of Everett, out toward Tulalip. The lots are bigger than the city lots to the south, and the ground is slow to drain. Water does not run off a slope because there often is not a slope. Valley lots often have fruit trees and a wind that finds them. We open the tree so it dries and so the fruit has light. We do not flat-top it.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98270 · 2020 population 70,714
Fruit trees and wind, not a hedge sheared flat
Apples, pears, and the overgrown ornamentals get a real pruning: dead wood out, height taken back to a lateral, center opened. The debris is hauled. A tree that has been topped before gets repaired as much as a bad head can be repaired, and we set that expectation.
Shrubs in wet beds get thinned so air moves. A solid green ball in a damp bed is leaf-spot weather.
The ground in Marysville
Flat ground sounds easy until a winter storm sits on it. French drains and permeable surfaces matter here more than tall walls. Yards are family yards: room for a lawn, a play set, fruit trees that people already have and want kept, and a patio that can take a barbecue without turning into a pond.
The soil is the kind that grows a decent lawn if it can breathe, and moss if it cannot. We mow, aerate, and seed the open lawns, and we bark the beds so the weed cycle slows down. Drainage is the job we would rather do first. A new sod lawn laid over undrained flat clay is a replacement lawn in two years. Fruit trees get pruned for light and for the fruit, not sheared into balls.
How we do the work
We thin, we raise, and we take out dead wood. We do not top a tree. Topping makes a bigger, weaker tree and a yearly invoice. If a tree is the wrong tree for the spot, the honest options are prune it correctly or remove it, and we will say which.
Shrubs get pruned at the right time for the plant. A spring-flowering shrub cut to balls in March is a shrub with no flowers. Hedges that are meant to be hedges get sheared. Everything else gets pruned back to a bud or a branch, not buzzed into a cube.
What we look at first
- Dead, crossing, and broken wood
- Clearance over the roof, the walk, and the drive
- Whether the tree is too close to the house to ever be right
- What the shrub is, so we do not cut off the flower buds
Cleanup
Brush hauled, sawdust blown off the walk, large wood bucked if we agreed to leave firewood. We do not leave a knee-high layer of twigs in the beds and call the prune done.
When we cut
Deadwood anytime. Spring bloomers after they flower. Fruit trees in the dormant season. Hedges when they are growing so they can heal the shear. A single “prune everything in March” visit is how flowering shrubs get ruined.
We do not top
Topping a fir or a maple makes sprouts that are weakly attached and a tree that is taller again in a few years, uglier the whole time. If you want it shorter than pruning can honestly make it, removal is the sentence. We will help you say it.
More from this crew
- Tree and shrub pruning across Snohomish County
- Yard cleanup in Marysville
- Landscaping in Marysville
- Beauty bark in Marysville
- Landscape design in Marysville
- Tree and shrub pruning in Everett
- Tree and shrub pruning in Arlington
- Tree and shrub pruning in Lake Stevens
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
