Stanwood is where the subdivisions run out and the fields start. Lots are larger, drives are longer, and the ground is the open, often heavy soil of a farm edge rather than a city fill pad. A long shelter belt is not a hedge trim. We maintain the trees that threaten the house and the drive, and we do not price an entire fenceline of firs as a pruning afternoon.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98292 · 2020 population 7,915
Windbreaks and the trees by the house
Clearance over the drive, deadwood over the roof, and the fruit trees if you have them. Field edges get the volunteer alders and blackberries cut back when that is the ask, and we call it what it is.
A climber, a ground person, and a chipper are the crew. If the tree is over the power line, that is the utility, not us. We stop at their corridor.
The ground in Stanwood
A Stanwood place might be a house, a lawn that is really a small pasture, a gravel drive, and a fence that has to mean something — keeping a view open, marking a line, holding a gentle slope. We mow and aerate at a scale that does not make sense on a Lynnwood lot. Weed pressure is real because the seed source is the field next door, not a crack in a sidewalk.
Drainage still matters. Flat or gently sloping heavy ground will sit wet. We use gravel where a paved drive would be wasted money, and a low wall where a bank needs a clean edge. Plantings can be simpler and tougher. The goal on a lot this size is a yard you can live in without a crew every week, with the edges kept and the drive solid.
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
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.
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.
More from this crew
- Tree and shrub pruning across Snohomish County
- Yard cleanup in Stanwood
- Landscaping in Stanwood
- Beauty bark in Stanwood
- Landscape design in Stanwood
- Tree and shrub pruning in Arlington
- Tree and shrub pruning in Marysville
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.
