The call usually comes in one of two shapes. Either somebody wants a tree gone because it drops leaves on the driveway and looked bad after the last storm, or somebody wants us to save a tree that has already been dead for two summers because their grandfather planted it. Both are understandable, and in both cases the answer is decided by the tree rather than by how anyone feels about it.
Start at the bottom, because that is where removals get decided. Look at the root flare where the trunk meets the ground. Mushrooms or hard shelf-like brackets growing there are fruiting bodies of a fungus already eating the structural wood inside, and by the time they appear on the outside the decay is well established. Soft or missing bark at the base, a cavity you can put your hand into, or soil heaved up on one side while the tree leans the other way — those are all structural, and no amount of pruning fixes any of them.
Then look at the union where the main stems split. A narrow V-shaped fork with bark pinched down inside it is what arborists call included bark, and it is a seam rather than a joint. Those are the failures that take half a mature maple off in a summer storm and drop it across a roof. Sometimes it can be cabled, sometimes the weight can be reduced, and sometimes the honest answer is that it is going to fail and you would rather choose the day.
Now look at the canopy, and this is where most trees turn out to be fine. Deadwood in the crown of an otherwise healthy tree is normal — trees shed branches they can no longer supply with light. If the trunk is sound and the roots are sound, deadwood is a pruning job, not a death sentence. The same goes for a tree that is simply too big for where it sits: crown reduction and thinning take the sail area and the overhang down without removing anything.
Ash is the exception that swallows every other rule in this part of Michigan. Emerald ash borer went through Ottawa, Allegan and Van Buren counties and killed essentially all of the untreated ash. If you still have a standing dead ash, take it seriously: dead ash goes brittle unusually fast and comes apart in ways that make a routine removal genuinely dangerous. It is far cheaper and far safer to have one taken down in the first two years than in the fifth.
A rough rule we use out loud with customers: if more than about half the canopy is dead, or if the problem is in the trunk or the roots, it is a removal. If the trunk and roots are sound and the problem is in the branches, it is a prune. Everything in between gets discussed standing under the tree, which is the only place that conversation actually works.
Tree Services & Landscaping covers Holland, Zeeland, Grand Haven, Spring Lake, Saugatuck, South Haven, Bangor, Allegan, Grand Rapids, Muskegon and everywhere within 50 miles of Holland. Free estimates, 24 hours a day, English and Spanish — call (616) 218-0091.