Are you sleeping downstairs in fear of a tree coming through your house? Do you feel like you are prey when you have asked a tree service for advice on how to deal with your urban or suburban forest? Fear is a tool of salesmen that have no clue what they are talking about. Often times trying to steer customers into a purchasing a light, irrelevant and overpriced wind thinning. Often times these companies are removing important indicators as to the real health of your trees. Epicormic shoots, deadwood, and overall vigor of the canopy, which are all effected by pruning, are all important in the context of determining the status and health of a large conifers root system. That after all is where the problems with fir, hemlock, pine, and cedar trees begin.

The best thing that you can do for the hazard abatement of your forest other than hiring Heritage Tree Care is to preform a monthly observation and visual inspection of your trees yourself. Things in your forest are always changing. In the spring all trees begin to grow a new set of leaves or needles. In the case of conifers these needles should be replacing needles from five to seven years ago that have fallen off during the previous year. Often times the bulk of the needles will fall off in the later months of the year. Foliage should be rich. Fresh yellowish needles on a single tree amongst many rich green trees can be a symptom of other issues. We are often looking for subtle differences like this to find symptoms of larger problems that may actually suggest fungal infections and wood rot disease.