Tree Removal in Bentonville, AR

When a tree actually needs to come out

Plenty of trees that look alarming are fine, and plenty that look fine are not. The ones we genuinely recommend removing usually fall into a few groups.

Dead or dying ash. Emerald ash borer has worked through most of Benton County. Once an ash loses its canopy, the wood goes brittle within a season and climbing it stops being safe. Dead ash gets removed early or it gets removed expensively.

Trees with a fresh lean. A tree that has always leaned is often stable. A tree that leaned after a storm, with cracked or heaved soil on the uphill side, has a failing root plate. On our thin soil over limestone, that heave is the warning and it usually shows up in the lawn before anything shows up in the crown.

Split unions. Bradford and callery pears in the older subdivisions come apart at the trunk union under ice and wind. Once one side has torn, the rest is coming. Cabling buys time on a valuable oak; it rarely makes sense on a pear.

Decay at the base. Mushroom conks at the root flare, hollow sound when you knock the trunk, or bark sloughing in sheets on a red oak stressed by drought. Those are structural problems, not cosmetic ones.

If it turns out the tree is sound and the problem is weight or clearance, we'll tell you that and quote reducing the crown instead. It's a smaller invoice for us and the right call for the tree.

How we take one down

If there's room to fell it whole, we fell it whole. That's fastest and cheapest, and on the open lots out toward Highfill and Gravette it's often possible.

In town it usually isn't. A tree twelve feet off a house with a service drop through the canopy gets climbed and dismantled from the top down, with each piece roped and lowered rather than dropped. Slower, more expensive, and the only responsible way to do it. We tarp what needs protecting, set the drop zone, and keep the ground crew out from under the work.

Brush goes through the chipper. Trunk wood leaves with us unless you want it — say so and we'll cut it to stove length. Then we rake the drop zone, blow off the driveway and walkways, and walk the yard with you before anyone leaves.

What it costs

Height and species matter less than people expect. Access is what sets the price. Can we get a truck and chipper within reach? What's directly under the tree? How far does every piece have to be carried?

A mid-size tree in an open backyard with gate access is a routine job. The same tree behind a fence, over a pool, on a Bella Vista slope where the equipment has to stay up at the road, is several times the labor. That's the entire reason two houses on the same street get very different quotes.

We give you a written number before we start and it doesn't change unless you add work. No deposit on standard jobs.

After the tree is gone

Removal leaves you with a stump and a ring of surface roots. Most people have us take care of the stump we leave behind on the same visit, because bringing the grinder back later costs more than doing it while we're already there.

If you're dealing with a tree that's already down across a driveway or into a roof, that's a different call and a faster response. Ring us rather than filling in a form for that one.