About Bellingham Tree Trimming

Most calls about a tree are not really about wanting it gone. They are about one problem with it. Needles and moss filling the gutters every autumn. A limb rubbing the roof when the wind picks up. A laurel hedge that has swallowed half the side yard. A view of the bay that has closed in a little more each year. An old apple tree that has not given a decent crop in a long time.

Almost all of those problems can be fixed with a saw and some patience, and the tree stays. That is the work we set out to do.

Whatcom County is a hard place to be careless with trees. Douglas fir, western red cedar and big-leaf maple grow tall and close to houses here, often planted decades before anyone thought about the roofline. Winter storms come in off the water, and the outflow winds that pour down from the Fraser Valley find every weak limb. Hillside lots in Bellingham trade on views of the bay, the San Juans and Mount Baker. Farm country around Lynden and Everson is full of orchard trees that were productive once and only need the right cuts to be productive again.

A bad cut on any of those trees is a problem for years. Topping a fir leaves several weak competing tops that break in the next windstorm. Over thinning a maple sends it into a panic of new growth. Cutting a conifer hedge back past the green leaves bare patches that never grow back. So we take the slower route: work out what the tree needs, cut in the right place, and leave it healthier and safer than we found it.

And when a tree really does need to come down, because it is dead, failing or simply in the wrong place, we will say so plainly and take it down properly.