Monroe sits on the Skykomish, with the fairgrounds on the edge of town. River-bottom ground stays wet, and a yard built as if the water table were low will heave, puddle, or grow moss until someone deals with the water. River-town lots have mature trees close to old houses. The work is deadwood and clearance. It is not a heavy reduction that leaves a stubbed crown over the porch.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98272 · 2020 population 19,608
Old trees, carefully
We take weight off the ends if a limb is too long over the roof, back to a real branch. We do not leave hat racks. Fruit trees in the back get opened up. The big cedar stays unless it is actually dangerous, in which case we talk removal and we do not sell a “prune” that is really an ugly half-removal.
Historic shrubs, the lilacs and the rhododendrons, get pruned after they flower, not in a February convenience visit that costs you the bloom.
The ground in Monroe
We see two kinds of lots. In town, smaller yards with the usual compacted soil and a lawn that has to look fine for most of the year. Closer to the river and the low ground, soils that remember high water. Gravel and drains belong there. A finished bark bed in a spot that floods is mulch in the neighbor’s fence line by spring.
The fair is part of the calendar. People want yards cleaned up and hedges cut back before the traffic and the guests, and they want storm debris gone after the first big fall wind. Trees on these lots — including the old fruit trees — need pruning that opens them up, not a topping that makes them dangerous. Native plantings along the wet edges do the work a lawn cannot.
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.
What we will not climb
A tree we cannot tie into safely, a tree into the power lines, a huge removal over a glass house. We would rather walk away than do a dangerous job from the wrong ladder. We will tell you who the job is for.
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 Monroe
- Landscaping in Monroe
- Beauty bark in Monroe
- Landscape design in Monroe
- Tree and shrub pruning in Sultan
- Tree and shrub pruning in Snohomish
- Tree and shrub pruning in Gold Bar
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.
