Tree Trimming & Pruning Libertyville, IL

Best Time for Tree Trimming in Lake County IL

Timing matters more with pruning than with any other tree job. Cut at the wrong time and you can invite trouble. Cut at the right time and the tree hardly notices.

Most trees are best trimmed while they're dormant, from late fall through winter. The leaves are down, so the whole branch structure is easy to see, and the tree isn't pushing new growth.

Oaks are the ones to be careful with. Don't prune an oak during the growing season, roughly spring through early fall. Fresh cuts attract the beetles that spread oak wilt. Winter is the safe window, and elms are similar. The one exception is a broken limb, which has to come off no matter the month.

Oak timing comes up a lot in the older lakeshore towns. If you're booking tree pruning in Highland Park, where mature oaks are common, plan on a winter date.

Signs a Tree Needs Trimming or Pruning

Stand back from the tree and look up. These are the things worth a call:

• Dead branches in the crown. They're gray, bare and often missing bark.
• Limbs rubbing on the roof, the siding or the gutters.
• Branches hanging low over the driveway, the walk or the street.
• Two branches crossing and wearing a wound into each other.
• A limb that's cracked where it meets the trunk.
• A crown so thick the lawn under it has gone thin.
• Shoots growing straight up from the trunk or the main limbs.

Kinds of Pruning: Cleaning, Thinning, Raising and Reducing

"Trim my tree" can mean several different jobs. It helps to know which one you're asking for.

• Crown cleaning. Taking out the dead, broken and rubbing branches. This is the basic one, and plenty of trees need nothing more.
• Crown thinning. Removing selected live branches through the crown so light and air get through. Done right, the tree keeps its shape and just looks less crowded.
• Crown raising. Taking off the lowest limbs to open up room over a lawn, driveway, sidewalk or roofline.
• Crown reduction. Shortening long limbs back to a side branch that can take over. It pulls a tree back from a house, and it is not the same as topping.
• Clearance pruning. Cutting back only what's touching the house, garage or fence.

Single Limbs, Young Trees and Crowded Crowns

If it's one heavy branch that worries you and not the whole tree, that's a smaller job. See taking off a single limb for how that's handled.

Thinning and raising are the two that people ask about most on full-grown shade trees. There's more on both at opening up a crowded crown.

A young tree is worth pruning too. A few small cuts while it's young set up a good shape and save big cuts later.

How Our Libertyville Crew Prunes a Tree, Step by Step

A pruning job is a string of small decisions. This is the order they happen in.

• Walk the tree with you. You point at what bothers you. We point at what we'd cut and why.
• Agree on the goal. Clearance from the roof, deadwood out, more light on the lawn. The goal decides the cuts.
• Deadwood first. Dead and broken limbs come out before any live wood is touched.
• Then the live cuts, as few as it takes. Each branch is cut back to the trunk or to a healthy side branch, never left as a stub.
• Heavy limbs in stages. A big limb gets an undercut first, then a top cut farther out, so it drops without ripping bark down the trunk. A last cut cleans up what's left.
• Rope anything over a target. Limbs above a roof, fence or garden are tied off and lowered on ropes.
• Step back and look. Before the last few cuts, somebody checks the shape from the ground.
• Chip, rake and haul.

Where a Proper Pruning Cut Goes

The finish cut matters most. It's made just outside the branch collar, the slightly swollen ring where a branch joins the trunk. Leave the collar and the tree can seal the wound over. Cut flush into the trunk or leave a long stub, and it can't.

Why Our Tree Service Won't Top a Tree

Topping means cutting the top of a tree flat to make it shorter. People ask for it because a tree feels too tall or too close. It's bad practice and we don't do it.

Here's what happens to a topped tree. It loses most of its leaves in one day, so it throws out a thicket of thin, fast shoots from every cut. Those shoots are weakly attached. The big flat cuts don't seal over, and rot starts in them. Before long the tree is tall again, uglier, and more likely to drop limbs.

If a tree really is too big for where it stands, the honest choices are a proper reduction or taking the tree out. We'll tell you which one makes sense.

What Makes a Tree Trimming Job Harder

Pruning looks lighter than removal, but the hard parts are the same ones.

• Reach. The branch that needs to go is usually the one farthest out over the roof.
• What's underneath. Roofs, skylights, fences, sheds, gardens and the neighbor's car all mean more rope work and slower cutting.
• Dead wood. Brittle limbs can break while they're being handled, so they come off in smaller pieces.
• Wires. Limbs in the lines along the street or the line to your house are the power company's to clear, not ours. ComEd is the utility in this area.
• Access. A backyard reached only through a narrow gate means every branch gets dragged out by hand.

What Tree Trimming Prices Are Based On

There's no price list, because trimming one dead limb and thinning a full-grown oak aren't the same job. You get a free quote and one flat price in writing before any cutting. It comes down to how big the tree is, how much is coming off, where it stands, the condition of the wood and how close equipment can get.

Most trimming can be priced from photos. Take one of the whole tree and a closer one of the branches you're worried about. How quotes work is laid out on the pricing page.

Close lot lines add work. With tree trimming in Vernon Hills and other towns with a lot of subdivisions, branches often hang over a fence and into the next yard, so limbs get lowered and not dropped.

Doing several trees in one visit makes more sense than calling back three times. If you want a tree trimmed in Grayslake or anywhere else in the county, walk the whole yard first and send photos of everything on your list.

Permits, Parkway Trees, Prep and Pruning Mistakes

Many Lake County villages have tree rules, and they aren't all alike. Your village may require a permit for some tree work, so check with village hall first if you're unsure. The tree in the strip between the sidewalk and the street usually belongs to the village, not to you, so ask before anybody cuts it. For a neighbor's tree hanging over your side, talk to the neighbor first.

Before trimming day, move cars out from under the tree, clear furniture and planters from below the branches being cut, unlock the gate and keep pets inside. Cleanup is on us. Branches go through the chipper, the lawn and beds get raked, and since Illinois keeps yard waste out of landfills, the brush is recycled. Want the bigger pieces for firewood? Say so and they stay.

And the mistakes that hurt trees:

• Topping. Covered above. Don't.
• Lion-tailing. Stripping the inside branches and leaving a puff of leaves at the tips. It makes limbs whippy and more likely to break.
• Flush cuts and stubs. Both keep the tree from sealing the wound.
• Overdoing it. A tree feeds itself with its leaves. Strip too much live crown in one go and you stress it.
• Pruning an oak in summer because that's when you noticed the branch.
• Working off a ladder with a chainsaw. A cut limb swings, and it tends to swing at the ladder.