Fill in the form or call 704.525.7148

Click to Call

Tree Care

Professional, affordable tree services done right.

Fully insured and licensed, our arborists have been providing high quality and affordable tree services to Charlotte and the surrounding area since 2000. Our full-service pruning and tree care services are offered year-round for your convenience.

How We Care for Your Trees

Tree Health Care

There are a variety of pest issues that can affect trees, from those pests that completely girdle and kill the tree to those that just cause aesthetic damage. Pests such as: borers, gall wasps, aphids, scale insects and other insect species can be very destructive. Other issues such as bacterial and fungal diseases present similar problems and can also be lethal.

We are paying particular attention to Emerald Ash Borers in the Charlotte Mecklenburg area, as they are a new pest to the region. They are lethal to Ash trees, so without proper protection all Ash trees will fall victim to this invasive pest over the next few years.

Protecting and nurturing your trees can be vital not only to their health but their survival. Fertilization, watering, pest control, fungal and disease control are all important and interconnected aspects of keeping your trees hearty and strong.

During the growing season most trees require supplemental fertilizer beyond what is naturally occurring from rainfall and ground residues. Depending upon tree species, fertilization should occur at least once a year from for most trees to provide adequate nutrition.

Tree Pruning

Proper trimming and pruning can keep your trees looking great and is essential for their health. Our ISA Certified Arborists understand how to properly prune each tree based on our client's goals and objectives for that tree. Some common types of pruning are:

Removal of dead, diseased, or broken branches for risk mitigation
Pruning to provide clearance with houses, over driveways, around other landscape plants or any other area of conflict
Structural pruning of young trees to help mitigate or correct defects while the tree is small and to promote a strong structure as it grows
Pruning to establish or preserve a view/line of sight
Reduction pruning of mature trees to selectively reduce length and weight to reduce the risk of large limb failure

Cabling & Bracing Trees

Trees are living organisms and grow in a less than perfect form just like all of us. These imperfections can lead to structural defects in a tree that can lead to loss of a large limb or section of the canopy. Many times, pruning by itself can go a long way to helping mitigate the risk posed by these defects. In some situations, your Arborscapes Arborist, may recommend installation of a cable or brace rod or other supplemental support system to provide additional support and reduce the risk of large limb/canopy failure. Arborscapes installs two types of cabling systems; one is an Extra High Strength Cable (EHS) system and the other is a composite fabric cabling system. Cabling is intended to restrict or dampen additional movement of limbs and stems beyond their breaking point. Cabling is often recommend for trees with co-dominant stems, branch unions that have a very tight angle, limbs that are judged to be 'over extended' based on the acritude of the tree and limbs that have a 'low aspect' ration in comparison to their parent stem/branch. Cables are generally installed high up in a tree's canopy and need to be inspected on a yearly basis or after major weather events. Not every tree will benefit from installation of a cabling system. Your Arborscapes Arborist can help determine if the tree is a good candidate for a supplemental support system.

Tree Preservation

As the Charlotte area continues to grow, development around trees and their loss as a result will continue to be an issue for our city. Arborscapes can help evaluate trees prior to construction planning, provide advice about the impacts to trees based on proposed construction and develop a plan for preserving that tree through the construction process. Not every tree is a good candidate for preservation and making tough decisions on the front end about building placement, grade changes or other changes to the site and how they will impact any existing trees can save a lot of cost and headache after construction is completed. Some of the tree preservation services we offer and may recommend:

Pre-construction tree inspection/evaluation
Establishment of a tree and soil protection zone
Root pruning near areas of excavation/grade changes
Soil remediation to correct damage done by construction
Preventative pest and disease control
Prescription soil fertilization
Charlotte UDO removal inspection

Real-estate Sale Property Inspections

Ensuring that the roof, foundation, and electrical wiring are all in good working order before purchasing a home are all routine points of inspection. During the buying process often times the landscape and trees are forgotten about until after the boxes are unpacked, pictures are hung, and everyone is settled and comfortable in the new space. Existing trees can be a large hidden expense or even danger that a new homeowner only realizes after the sale is finalized. Inspection prior to sale allows for the identification of any areas of concern and care or removal recommendations and cost information for those recommended services.

Tree Inventories

Many times, communities and HOA are presented with the task of managing large populations of trees. Conducting an initial tree inventory can be a good way to establish what trees are currently on the site and where they are located, their current condition and any care recommendations that may be required over the next few seasons. Making blanket recommendations for populations of trees without regard to specific tree needs wastes community resources.

Tree Risk Assessment

Most everything in our daily lives has some amount of risk associated with it and trees are no different. Consequences of a large tree pulling up out of the ground and falling can be catastrophic to property and potentially deadly to people.

Lightning Protection

Lighting protection systems are designed to minimize the chances a tree will be damaged by a lightning strike by providing a path to the ground outside of a tree's living tissues. These systems consist of a long copper cable connected to a terminal rod as high in the canopy of the tree as possible on one end and a ground rod buried away from the trunk of the tree. Not every tree needs a lightning protection system (The chances of a dogwood getting struck by lightning are pretty near zero) and there are a variety of factors that are considered raining from tree species to site conditions.

Trimming & Pruning

Regular trimming and pruning keeps your trees looking great and is essential for their health. Our ISA Certified Arborists understand how to properly prune each tree to promote healthy new growth by maintaining the tree's natural shape.

Pruning removes dead or diseased branches and limbs that could be more likely to house pest and animal infestations harmful to the tree. Regular trimming and pruning also prevents breaking and falling limbs that could damage your property or pose a safety hazard to your family.

Tree Banding

Every year, cankerworms cause extreme damage to trees in North Carolina. We offer assessments and tree banding to keep your trees healthy and pest free.

Cankerworms spin "silken threads" that allow them to drop from foliage to escape predators, lower themselves to the ground when full grown, and to be blown by the wind to other trees. Wingless females crawl up the trees to lay small irregular clusters of fifty or more eggs in bark crevices in the crown of the host tree. The eggs hatch in the spring.

Tree banding, which uses a sticky band of paper to trap the females as they crawl up the trees, is the best course of prevention. The City will also spray in the Spring for the worms as they hatch, but it is crucial to take action in the fall, after most leaves have fallen, to prevent as many worms as possible.

They feed on many broadleaf trees including Oak, Birch, Maple, Elm and Apple. The first signs of infestation are the appearance of small "shot holes" in new leaves and larvae can be found under the leaves. By the time the larvae finish feeding, only the major veins and midribs of the older leaves remain.

Tree Pest Control & Removal

At Arborscapes, we use a process called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to protect your trees from damaging insects. IPM is an efficient and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a combination of current, comprehensive information on the life cycles of pests and their relationship with the environment.

IPM, in combination with traditional pest control methods, is used to manage and control pests with the least possible hazard to people, property and the environment. IPM is not a single pest control method, but a series of pest management evaluations, decisions and controls. In practicing IPM, growers who are aware of the potential for infestation follow a four tiered approach:

Set Action Thresholds - Set threshold at which pest populations or environmental conditions indicate that pest control action should be taken. Typically this will be the level at which the pests threaten the health of your trees, shrubs or ornamentals.
Monitor & Identify Pests - Some organisms are innocuous or even beneficial. IPM programs work to monitor pests and identify them accurately so that appropriate control decisions can be made.
Prevention - As a first line of pest control, IPM programs work to manage the plant material to prevent pests from becoming a threat. These control methods can be very effective, cost-efficient and present little to no risk to people or the environment.
Control - Once monitoring, identification, and action thresholds indicate that pest control is required, IPM programs evaluate the proper control method both for effectiveness and risk. Effective, less risky pest controls are chosen first, including highly targeted chemicals, such as pheromones to disrupt pest mating, or mechanical control, such as trapping or weeding. If further monitoring, identifications and action thresholds indicate that less risky controls are not working, then additional pest control methods, such as targeted spraying of pesticides, may be deployed. Broadcast spraying of non-specific pesticides is a last resort.

Soil Fertilization & Management

At Arborscapes, our ISA Certified Arborists know that trees growing in their natural habitat should have access to all of the minerals they need to survive and grow. Anything you can do to mimic that habitat (eg. letting leaves remain on the ground in the fall instead of raking them up) will reduce the need for fertilizer.

However, for most of our landscape designs, the need for fertilizer is never entirely eliminated. Fall fertilization serves to make available vital nutrients to increase root structure and mass, increase biological activity and diversity, increase availability of plant nutrients and uptake and increase active organic matter.

Custom fertilization planning
Our Arborists can examine your trees to understand the best time of year for fertilization. This will typically be from fall to mid-spring when the tree's roots take nutrients from the soil and apply them to important health-promoting functions such as root development and disease resistance.

Using biological inoculants during the fall at the time of mulching will provide a blanket of beneficial microbes which strengthen the root zones while providing depleted nutrients in the surrounding soil as well as roots. During the growing season, fertilizing can help a tree overcome mineral deficiencies and fight off infections.

If your specific needs require fertilizing in mid- to late summer, we will avoid formulations high in nitrogen as this will promote weak, new growth that may be easily damaged in the winter.

Soil compaction prevention
Long before soil compaction shows as a water problem - we will see compaction show up as a microelement deficiency. That's where Arborscapes comes in. We will feed your trees with organic fertilizers to provide depleted nutrients and to strengthen the root zone without high NPK fertilizers that can leach into your water systems.

Roots must respire - burn glucose to release energy. Oxygen is a major requirement for this process. Mycorrhizae, fungi that establish a symbiotic relationship with the roots of trees and plants, are aerobic microorganisms - which means they require free, gaseous oxygen for their growth. The main reason soil compaction is injurious to the plant system is not because of the oxygen - which is very important, but because soil compaction kills the mycorrhizae. At this point the plant material begins to suffer from lack of water and elements and the plant material begins to have a microelement deficiency.