Mountlake Terrace is mid-century houses on city lots, with newer buildings near the transit line. The slopes are gentle, the soils are compacted, and the yards were not designed for the amount of roof water a remodels-worth of downspouts can dump. City trees are too often the wrong species crammed against the siding. Pruning can buy years. It cannot shrink a big-leaf maple into a courtyard tree forever.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98043 · 2020 population 21,272
Small trees, close to houses and wires
We clear the roof, the walk, and the neighbor’s driveway. We thin the crown so the gutters are not a solid mat. If the tree is lifting the walk or filling the sewer side with roots, pruning the top does not fix the root, and we will not pretend it does.
Ornamental shrubs in the front get pruned to buds so they do not look shaved. A sheared mound is a choice, and we ask before we make it.
The ground in Mountlake Terrace
Lots are modest. A patio, a small lawn, a side yard that has become a moss strip, and a fence that is older than the owners. That is the usual visit. The soil has been walked on for sixty years. Aeration and dethatching change the lawn more than a bag of seed thrown on top.
Where the lot tips, it tips a little, and a low wall or a re-graded swale is enough. We are not cutting roads into a mountain. Pavers get people off the mud by the back door, and a pressure wash takes the black film off a walk that has not seen sun all winter. Plantings should stay in scale with the house. A hedgerow that needs a lift every year is the wrong tree for a forty-foot lot.
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
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.
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.
More from this crew
- Tree and shrub pruning across Snohomish County
- Yard cleanup in Mountlake Terrace
- Landscaping in Mountlake Terrace
- Beauty bark in Mountlake Terrace
- Landscape design in Mountlake Terrace
- Tree and shrub pruning in Lynnwood
- Tree and shrub pruning in Edmonds
- Tree and shrub pruning in Brier
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.
