Snohomish is the old river town. Downtown sits above the Snohomish River, the houses have mature trees, and a lot of the gardens were planted decades ago and then left to get big. The ground near the river stays wet. The hills just south of it do not. 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 98290 · 2020 population 10,091
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 Snohomish
Historic lots come with plants nobody planned: a cedar too close to the porch, a lilac that has swallowed the walk, beds that were neat in 1998 and are roots and bindweed now. Pruning and a hard cleanup are often the whole first phase. Bark, used with a little restraint, puts a finished line back on a Victorian front without covering the problem.
Closer to the river, drains matter. Riparian edges want native plants that can take wet soil, not a sod lawn rolled to the bank. We do not haul fill into the floodplain to “raise the yard” without understanding where that water will go next. Uphill, in the newer pockets, the work looks more like the rest of the county: lawns, small patios, and moss.
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.
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.
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 Snohomish
- Landscaping in Snohomish
- Beauty bark in Snohomish
- Landscape design in Snohomish
- Tree and shrub pruning in Monroe
- Tree and shrub pruning in Everett
- 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.
