Towns we cover around Palmetto

Palmetto and Bradenton

These are the older streets, and the trees on them are older too. A lot of the housing is one story concrete block with a low roof, and somebody planted a laurel oak fifteen feet off the corner of it decades ago. Laurel oaks are fast, soft and short lived compared to a live oak, and by the time the canopy is over the roof, the inside of the trunk is often not what the outside looks like.

What we watch for around here is weight sitting out on long horizontal limbs over a roof line, and a root flare that has been buried by years of mulch and sod raised up against the trunk. Buried flare rots quietly and there is no sign of it from the street. A removal in a tight side yard between two block houses is a rigging job, not a felling job, and it is priced that way because everything comes down on a rope.

Longboat Key and the Sarasota side

Out on the key and along the water it is salt and wind doing the work. Palms take it better than almost anything else, which is why they are everywhere, but they still hold a skirt of dead fronds and heavy seed pods that turn into thrown weight in a blow. Trimming a palm properly means taking the dead and the pods and leaving the green, not shaving it down to a point because somebody on the street said it looks tidier.

Sarasota lots run tighter to the house with more pool cages, and a screen enclosure is the most expensive thing in the yard to drop a limb on. Anything over a cage comes down in small pieces with a rope on it, which takes longer and is the only way it gets done.

Across the bay into Hillsborough and Pinellas

Ruskin, Apollo Beach, Sun City Center and Gibsonton sit on flat ground that holds water after a summer rain, and that is the recipe for a lean. A pine with its root plate soaked will move under wind it shrugged off in April. If you see the ground cracked or lifted on the far side of the trunk from the lean, do not wait on it.

Saint Petersburg and Pinellas Park are further, so it makes sense for a full day of work rather than one small trim. Call anyway and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth the drive or whether you are better off with somebody on your side of the bay.