Expert Tree Maintenance with Arborist Now
Introduction
Trees are valuable investments for property owners. They can be expensive to plant and nurture, but the benefits they provide to their surroundings are enormous.
Trees support human health and well-being, clean pollutants from the air, create attractive visual landscapes, provide wood, shelter wildlife, and contribute to flood and erosion control. To properly protect and nurture these vital organisms, routine tree maintenance is essential!
For expert tree maintenance in San Francisco, look no further than Arborist Now. Arborist Now offers the best tree maintenance in San Francisco. Our professionals offer a variety of services that can be tailored to any gardener or arborist’s individual needs.
In addition to this, Arborist Now will also work with you to design a custom maintenance plan that fits the needs of your space. This includes a full structural evaluation of every tree and a detailed analysis of its health, condition, and overall growth. Put your trust in Arborist Now to protect and help your trees! Being proactive and about their maintenance will result in healthier trees and a more beautiful property for you.
Long-term Tree Healthcare
Trees are sturdy organisms, but routine inspections can help ensure they are not suffering from hidden blights. A tree might look healthy on the outside, but a host of dangerous issues can be hidden beneath the surface, such as disease, insect infestation, drought damage, poor soil quality, toxic chemicals, pesticides, and inadequate upkeep.
Trees in urban settings require special care as well because they are under increased stress due to their surroundings. Your trees will benefit from a proactive approach to their health care.
A Diagram of a Tree's Dripline and CRZ
Soil analysis is crucial to long-term tree healthcare. The soil on your property has a unique balance of aeration, alkalinity, density, and nutrient makeup. This will indicate which types of trees and plants can thrive on your property—additionally, experts can use soil analysis to come up with solutions for how to make your soil more hospitable to the trees already planted there, resulting in healthier trees.
Insect population control also helps your trees thrive. Many different species of insects live on or around your trees, often in harmony. In some cases, however, insects can cause irreversible tree damage. For example, certain types of beetles bore holes into trees and weaken their structure. Inspections from our experts can detect insect infestations before they reach critical levels and put a plan in place to stymie the infestation. Moreover, routine inspections will ensure that the tree stays healthy, which is the best defense against insect infestation to begin with—insects are less likely to target strong, hardy trees and will target weaker trees first.
A proactive approach to tree health care is necessary for best results. As experts in tree health management in San Francisco, Arborist Now will tailor plans to suit your individual property, providing information and recommendations that address your specific concerns and budget. The results are beautiful, healthy trees that will last for generations to come!
Tree Preservation
The professionals at Arborist Now know how to best serve your property’s trees through expert tree maintenance and preservation. Tree preservation is essential in keeping your trees healthy and thriving. To get the best results out of your landscape, an expert tree preservation plan will help maintain the overall vision, health, safety, and aesthetics of your landscape.
Arborist Now offers tailored tree preservation plans for homeowners and businesses in San Francisco. A combination of pruning, root zone therapy, and soil improvement will be used to revive or sustain older trees. Trees are a big investment, and the experts at Arborist Now are committed to protecting and conserving that investment.
Pruning is done for many reasons—sometimes to remove weak, diseased, or dead limbs from your trees to reduce the hazard of falling branches and other times to improve light penetration and air movement through the tree by selectively removing branches from the top of the tree. Arborist Now experts are trained in all types of pruning, and more information can be found here.
Trees are similar to icebergs—what you see above ground is only a portion of the entire organism! The hidden underground root system is essential to the tree’s growth and vitality. Root zone therapy focuses on improving soil aeration and adding additional nutrients and other elements to help the roots thrive.
Especially in urban areas where new projects and construction are always a possibility, understanding and protecting a tree’s Critical Root Zone (or CRZ) is essential. The CRZ (sometimes called the tree protection area) is an imaginary circle around the base of the tree that represents the portion of tree roots that must be protected from disturbances in order to ensure the tree’s health. The CRZ often corresponds with the tree’s "dripline"—the line where the tree’s canopy ends and water drips off and onto the ground. In reality, the tree’s total root zone extends much farther than the CRZ, but knowing where the CRZ lies is a good first step in protecting your tree’s health.
The general knowledge of how to calculate the CRZ is to add a 12-inch radius on the ground for every inch of the tree trunk’s diameter. The resulting measurement is an estimation of how far the tree’s root system extends, which will in turn inform how much of the tree’s surrounding area should be protected from ground disturbances such as paving or drainage installation.
Tree Selection
Selecting trees for your property is one of the most important decisions a property owner will make! Trees have the potential to outlive the owner, so this decision could impact generations. Arborist Now can help you make the best decision for your unique situation.
How can you tell which trees are right for your landscape? The first step is to consider your property’s site conditions, because these will determine how well certain trees will grow. Site conditions include climate, moisture, shade cover, space, and soil quality. Different species of trees will thrive in varying conditions. For example, trees that favor dry soil include English white oak, ginkgo, and black hill spruce. Trees that do well in the shade include American beech, common witch hazel, and Japanese maple.
After site conditions have been researched, the next step is to decide what purpose the trees will serve on the landscape in question. Here are a few concepts to consider when selecting your trees:
- Shade
- Privacy
- Aesthetics
- Wind protection
There are a wide variety of trees that will meet your desires and also thrive in your site conditions. Big, leafy trees such as the American sycamore or the red maple will increase property value by raising aesthetic appeal and will also provide shade during the summer months. These kinds of trees can even lower a home or building’s cooling costs if they are positioned to block excess sunlight from the windows. During the winter, the tree’s leaves are shed, allowing cooler winter sunlight to warm the building instead.
Less functional, but just as beautiful, are ornamental trees such as the flowering crabapple or the eastern redbud. Ornamental trees are typically small and do not grow very tall, so they are not useful for providing shade. However, a well-placed ornamental tree will add an eye-catching focal point to any landscape and add seasonal color and beauty.
Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom - Image by pudding8_8 from Pixabay
For verdant color that lasts all throughout the year, evergreens are the obvious choice. These sturdy trees can endure cold weather and harsh conditions without losing their beauty. They can provide consistent shade for any area of your property, and they are also an ideal choice if you want additional privacy in your landscape. With their year-round foliage, a row of evergreens makes the perfect privacy screen. They can also act as windbreaks for your property.
Evergreens tend to be relatively low-maintenance, though some trees will shed their foliage or drop needles and seeds during different seasons. Evergreens encompass many different types of trees, from larger kinds such as spruce and juniper to smaller varieties such as the dwarf arborvitae.
Choose Arborist Now for help with your tree selection. Our experts can provide the perfect trees for your site conditions and ensure they live long and healthy lives, benefiting your property and the community as a whole.
Arborist Now offers the best tree planting and maintenance in the San Francisco area. Our experts will walk you through every step of the tree selection process, from evaluating your site conditions, to choosing trees that will best satisfy your aesthetic and practical desires, to planting and nurturing, to developing the perfect maintenance schedule for optimal tree health.
Tree Inventory
An important part of any urban forestry management program is an accurate inventory of all existing trees and planting sites. With this knowledge, you can prepare for future planting with ease and also properly maintain your existing trees. Tree inventories can keep track of which trees are in need of pruning, which trees might be a liability due to their locations, and how many planting sites are available for the future.
Here are a few items that tree inventories can help you accomplish:
- Keep track of trees’ locations, ages, types, and conditions
- Create accurate maintenance schedules for existing trees
- Develop precise budgets for tree and plant care
- Manage changes in tree population
- Record tree maintenance
Arborist Now is dedicated to working hand-in-hand with property owners and managers to provide a tree inventory and management program in San Francisco. We present a comprehensive plan to make the best decisions and also allow you to competently manage tree population, maintenance, and planting activity with your budget in mind.
Tree Structure Evaluation
One of the biggest concerns arborists and homeowners have is the possibility of trees falling and causing property damage. Never underestimate the potential risk trees pose to their surroundings! A tree that looks healthy on the outside might be hiding hazardous structural issues.
Arborist Now provides unmatched tree structure evaluation in San Francisco and surrounding areas. Our experts will survey your trees for symptoms of decay, weak branches, splits, cracks, and other signs of poor health, disease, or decay when performing a tree structure evaluation.
Some potential issues your trees could face include:
- Storm damage
- Severe weather condition damage
- Saturated soil
- Poor growth patterns
- Poor root system
Once the tree’s structure has been evaluated, experts can put together a plan to prevent further damage. Techniques such as tree cabling and bracing can be utilized to protect your property. Tree bracing is a delicate process that can be easily mishandled by amateur arborists, potentially causing permanent damage. Stakes or braces, when misapplied, could prevent the tree from developing a strong root system or lead to breakage. Trust our professionals with these processes for the safest results.
Mulching
A Gardener Layers Mulch in a Flower Bed
You might think of mulch as merely an aesthetic addition in landscaping, but mulch plays a valuable role in the health of gardens and trees. Arborist Now offers mulching as one of many services. Proper mulching is essential in nurturing a young tree’s growth.
Arborist Now offers mulch delivery to San Francisco, and, for an hourly fee, experts can deliver mulch to any San Francisco site and spread it under trees, hedges, gardens, and other property areas. Moreover, the mulch you will receive from Arborist Now is environmentally friendly, created from trimming waste and other organic matter.
Here are a few examples of what mulch does for trees:
- Retains water to keep roots hydrated
- Prevents soil compaction
- Prevents soil erosion
- Discourages weed growth
- Insulates the soil to keep the tree warm during cold weather
- Keeps roots cool during hot weather
Newly planted trees will especially benefit from a layer of mulch.
Many amateur arborists may become overzealous with mulch, creating a large mound around the base of the tree. Although mulch is usually a wonderful addition to nourishing your tree, too much mulch can have the opposite of the intended effect. Overmulching can cause suffocated and dehydrated roots and can even encourage pests. These will all spell doom for your burgeoning grove! Leave mulching to our experts for the best results for your trees and plants.
There are a wide variety of mulches available, ranging from more expensive options like spruce or pine bark to cheaper but short-lived options, such as shredded leaves and pine needles. The professionals at Arborist Now can help you choose the best mulch for your trees and mulch them efficiently! Contact us today for expert care and advice.
Originally published on October 26, 2017.
