Tree trimming and pruning is most of what we do in Paris, and most tree trimming is not about making a tree smaller. It is about taking weight off the wrong places, getting the dead material out, and cutting so the tree can seal what we cut.
Our tree trimming and pruning covers mature shade trees, ornamentals, fruit trees, and young trees that need shaping before their faults set. Ring (226) 546-3814 and we will come and look at yours.
Every branch meets its parent at a collar — a slightly swollen ring of tissue at the base. That collar is the tree's own wound response, and it is the only part that can grow over a cut.
Cut flush and you take the collar with it, and the tree cannot close the wound. Cut too long and you leave a stub that dies back and rots inward. Cut just outside the collar and the tree seals it in a few seasons. On the big street maples through the older part of Paris you can read both kinds of cut from the pavement, thirty years on.
This is the whole difference between tree trimming that helps a tree and tree trimming that starts a decay column. It is not visible from the ground for years, which is exactly why it gets done badly so often.
Taking height or spread off a tree properly means cutting each limb back to a lateral branch big enough to take over as the new leader — roughly a third of the diameter of what you removed.
Topping is the other thing, and it is still being sold in this county. It cuts across the limb wherever the ladder happened to reach. The tree responds with dozens of fast weak shoots off the wound, all attached at the surface rather than anchored in the wood, and in a few years you have a denser, heavier, weaker crown than you started with, sitting on top of large open wounds.
If somebody has quoted you a price to "cut the top out" of a tree, that is what they mean.
Three faults show up on nearly every mature tree we trim in Paris.
Deadwood is the first, and it is the one that actually hurts people. It comes out on any tree we are in anywhere in the County of Brant, regardless of what else the job was for.
Rubbing limbs are the second, and tree trimming and pruning takes one of the two out. Two branches in contact wear the bark off each other, and the wound stays open because it is reopened every windy day.
Crossing and inward growth is the third — branches heading back through the middle of the crown rather than out of it. They shade the interior, they rub, and they add weight without adding any canopy.
Fruit trees want an open centre and light reaching the fruiting wood, and they want their tree trimming and pruning done in late winter. An apple that has not been pruned for a decade is not a one-visit job; it is three winters of gradual work, because taking that much at once will push out water shoots and nothing else.
Young trees are the cheapest tree trimming and pruning you will ever buy. Fifteen minutes on a ten-year-old tree — taking out a competing leader, removing a union that is going to include bark — prevents a four-figure cabling or removal job when that tree is fifty. The subdivisions on the high ground above Paris are full of trees at exactly that age, and almost nobody does it.
Tell us which tree, roughly how tall, and what is underneath it. Somebody attends, walks the property, and sends back a written scope naming each tree, the work on each, and where the debris goes. Nothing is owed for the visit. Ring (226) 546-3814 or go back to the Paris Tree Service home page for the full list of what we take on.
Very few jobs stop at one of these. Here is everything else we do.
Dead branch removal is the tree trimming job people put off longest, and the one that gives least warning. A dead limb does not creak, lean or drop leaves to tell you it is going. It stays exactly where it is until the day it does not, which is why dead branch removal gets booked after the fact rather than before.
View Dead Branch Removal
Emergency storm damage cleanup is the call that comes at five in the morning, and it is the one part of tree trimming nobody plans for. A tree across the drive, a limb through the garage roof, a trunk resting on the car, or a branch left hanging over the front door with nothing holding it. Storm damage cleanup is answered outside working hours.
View Emergency Storm Damage Cleanup
Tree removal is the last option on the list, not the first, and we would rather talk you out of a tree removal than sell you one you did not need. But a dead, split, badly leaning or structurally finished tree beside a house is past what tree trimming can fix, and pretending otherwise costs more in the end.
View Tree Removal
Crown thinning and canopy reduction are the two kinds of tree trimming that make a large tree less of a liability without taking it out. Thinning takes density out of the crown; canopy reduction takes size off the outside of it. They solve different problems, they are constantly confused, and neither one is topping.
View Crown Thinning and Canopy Reduction
Tree cabling and bracing is how you keep a structurally suspect tree that is otherwise healthy and worth keeping, once tree trimming alone will not do it. A cable is a flexible support fitted high in the crown between two limbs or two stems; a brace is a rigid rod through a union that is already moving. Cabling and bracing limits movement, it does not repair the union.
View Tree Cabling and Bracing
Stump grinding and removal is the tree trimming job that turns a felled tree back into usable garden. A grinder takes the stump down below ground level in chips, so the area can be levelled, turfed, planted or paved. Stump grinding is quoted separately from taking the tree down.
View Stump Grinding and RemovalDescribe the tree and what is under it. Somebody attends, looks at the whole property, and returns a written scope with the debris and the exclusions spelled out.
The more you can tell us about the tree and the access, the more the first visit achieves. Only a way of reaching you is required. Would you sooner speak to someone? The number is (226) 546-3814.
