Arborist Service in Denver Trimming, Crown Care, Disease Treatment & Storm Assessments

This is probably our busiest service, and there's a reason for it. Denver's dry summers and heavy spring snow put real stress on branches. Untrimmed trees drop limbs during those wet April storms, sometimes right onto a fence or a roof. Regular pruning keeps that from happening.

We trim for a few reasons. Sometimes a tree's grown into power lines near the sidewalk. Sometimes low branches are blocking a driveway in Washington Park or scraping a second-story window. And sometimes it's just about shape, an overgrown tree that's shading out the whole yard.

Good pruning cuts do more than clean things up. They:

• Remove weak or crossing branches before they fail
• Open up the canopy so air and light get through
• Reduce weight on limbs that snow tends to collect on
• Encourage stronger growth the following season

Timing matters here. Late winter works for most species in Denver, before buds break. But some trees need summer trims instead, it depends on the species and what you're trying to fix.

We've been climbing Denver trees for over 20 years, and every yard's a little different. The dedicated trimming page walks through our process and what a typical visit looks like.

Ash and elm trees make up a huge chunk of Denver's urban canopy. That's a problem, because both species face serious disease pressure right now. Dutch elm disease has been working through older neighborhoods for years. Emerald ash borer showed up in Colorado back in 2013 and hasn't slowed down since.

We get more calls about this than anything else in late spring and early summer, when leaf-out reveals which trees made it through winter healthy and which didn't.

Signs your ash or elm needs attention:

• Thinning canopy or dead branches near the top
• Bark splitting in vertical strips
• D-shaped exit holes in the trunk
• Wilting leaves that curl before fall
• Sucker growth at the base

Treatment options depend on how far the disease has progressed. Early cases often respond to trunk injections or soil treatments. Advanced cases might need pruning to remove infected limbs before the problem spreads to healthy wood.

Homes near Washington Park have some of the oldest elms in Denver, and we treat several every season. Waiting rarely helps here. But a quick assessment can tell you exactly where your tree stands and what treatment makes sense for it.

Some trees just outgrow their spot. A silver maple in a Washington Park backyard can push branches over the roofline in ten years flat. That's where crown reduction comes in. We cut back the outer branches to shrink the whole canopy, without hacking off the top or leaving stubs.

This isn't the same as topping a tree. Topping is a bad shortcut that weakens the structure and invites disease. Crown reduction works with the tree's natural shape, cutting at proper lateral points so it heals clean and keeps growing right.

You'll want this service if:

• Branches hang over your roof, deck, or power lines
• The tree feels top-heavy or lopsided after storms
• You're trying to keep a big tree from shading out your whole yard
• A recent Denver windstorm left you nervous about what's overhead

I've walked plenty of yards in Denver where a crown reduction saved a tree that homeowners assumed had to come down. Cutting size down doesn't mean cutting corners, either. We size every cut to the branch's diameter and the tree's species, because a reduction done wrong stresses the tree more than doing nothing at all.

The dedicated crown reduction page walks through how we decide how much to take off and why timing matters more than most people think.

Dead branches don't creak and warn you before they drop. They just let go. And in Denver, that's a real problem, our freeze-thaw cycles crack limbs from the inside out long before you ever see it on the outside.

Deadwooding means we go through your tree and cut out the dead, dying, or diseased wood. Nothing else gets touched. This is different from crown thinning, we're not shaping the tree here, we're removing hazards.

Here's when we get called for this most:

• After a spring hailstorm rolls through Washington Park and snaps small branches loose
• Before a big wind event, since dead limbs are the first thing to fail
• When you notice bark falling off in patches or branches with no leaves in summer
• Ahead of selling a home, since inspectors flag dead wood over walkways

I've climbed trees in Cherry Creek where the dead wood was invisible from the ground but obvious once you're up in the canopy. That's the value of having someone trained look closely.

Leaving dead branches up is asking for a call to your insurance company. Get it cleared out before the next storm, not after.