Tree Service in Salt Lake City, UT

Tree Service in Salt Lake City starts with a question most other cities never make you ask: is this tree yours? Salt Lake City Urban Forestry looks after roughly 85,000 public trees, about 63,000 of them along streets and 22,000 in parks and open space. The tree in the strip between your sidewalk and the curb is usually one of those. The maple in the backyard, the spruce by the porch and the elm leaning over the garage are usually yours. We work on the private ones, and we tell you plainly when a job touches the public side.

The park strip rule

The city requires a permit before anyone removes, prunes or plants a tree in the public right-of-way, and it issues those permits only to arborists certified by the International Society of Arboriculture. If you are not sure where the right-of-way ends, Urban Forestry asks residents to call its office first at (801) 972-7818. When we walk your property and a limb we would need to cut belongs to a park strip tree, we point it out, leave it alone and help you sort out the next step with the city before work is scheduled.

Old trees on old lots

Much of the housing stock in the valley predates World War II, and the Avenues bench holds a historic district of Victorian-era homes. Neighborhoods like 9th and 9th, Yalecrest and Sugar House grew up around trees that are now very large. Large old trees on narrow lots mean limbs over neighbors' roofs, roots under driveways and very little room to drop wood. On those jobs we usually take a tree down in pieces, lowering each section on a rope instead of letting it fall, and we plan where the chipper and the truck will sit before the first cut.

Big trees on record

The Utah Big Tree Directory, which tracks the largest known specimen of each species in the state, lists many of its record trees in Salt Lake City: an American elm, a black walnut, a black locust, a common hackberry, a cedar of Lebanon and dozens more. You do not need a state record in the yard to have a tree worth keeping. Most of what we do on mature east-side trees is careful thinning and deadwood removal so a healthy tree stays healthy, not removal.

West side, east side

The city runs from the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake flats, near 4,210 feet, up to foothill neighborhoods on the old Lake Bonneville shorelines. In Rose Park, Poplar Grove and Glendale we see a lot of fast-growing shade trees planted mid-century, many now topped or storm-split. Up on the benches the work is often about slope: setting up on a hillside, protecting retaining walls and getting wood down steps.

Getting rid of the wood

If you are doing small pruning yourself, the city's Call 2 Haul program includes one green-waste pickup a year with residential garbage service. Branches must be under 24 inches in diameter and cut to 5 feet or shorter, brush piled no higher than 4 feet, and large stumps are not taken. On our jobs, cleanup and hauling are written into the estimate so nothing ends up on the curb waiting for a pickup date.

Call (385) 217-6481 or send the form with a few photos, and we will set up a time to look at the trees in person. Get a free estimate