Madison's Expert Arborists

Madison’s Tree Challenges

Oversized silver maples are Madison’s signature risk. Planted for fast shade when these neighborhoods were built, they are now among the largest residential trees in Davidson County, soft wooded, often hollow, and standing over houses a fraction of their size. Some can be reduced and cabled into more years of service. Some cannot. We tell you which, with the reasons in writing.

Neelys Bend river soil grows big trees and loose footing. The peninsula’s bottomland pushes fast growth, then saturates in wet winters until root plates shift. Trees out the Bend that lean a little more each year are telling you something. We read soil heave and root exposure on every estimate out there, because windthrow on a saturated bend is a whole tree event, not a limb.

Deferred maintenance canopy is common on blocks where the trees have never once been pruned. Decades of deadwood and overextended limbs come due eventually, in Amqui and along the Gallatin Pike corridor the same as anywhere. A first structured pruning visit resets the clock and nearly always costs less than the damage from waiting.