Sultan sits on the Sultan River, on the way up the highway toward the trails and the passes. Yards step with the terrain. Water comes off the higher ground, crosses a lawn, and heads for the river or the ditch. Foothill properties collect broken wood and leaners after wind. The work is clearance and hazard, then shape.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98294 · 2020 population 5,458
Limbs over the roof, alders at the edge
We take the dead and the hanging stuff first. Alders coming in from the clearing get cut back or taken out while they are small. A large fir over the house is assessed honestly. If it needs a climber and a plan, we say that before anyone starts a saw from a ladder in the wrong place.
Debris on these lots is bulky. Hauling is part of the price. Leaving a slash pile “for later” is how you get a rodent hotel against the shop.
The ground in Sultan
The useful projects are the ones that make a sloped lot walkable: a gravel path that stays put, a rock wall where the bank is cutting, a drain at the top of the slope so the patio is not the creek. Forest edge is close. Alders and maples lean in, and after a wind the cleanup is limbs, not a few leaves on a patio.
Lawns exist on the benches. They need seed that can take shade at the tree line and a soil that is often thin. We do not promise a golf-course surface against the timber. Native mountain plants hold the cuts better than a bark bed that just slides downhill in January. Access for machines is usually fine along the highway side and tight once you are in the trees. We look at that before we promise a wall.
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.
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.
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.
More from this crew
- Tree and shrub pruning across the region
- Yard cleanup in Sultan
- Landscaping in Sultan
- Beauty bark in Sultan
- Landscape design in Sultan
- Tree and shrub pruning in Gold Bar
- Tree and shrub pruning in Index
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.
