Tree Trimming & Pruning in Ocala, FL
Limbs scraping the roof every time the wind picks up. A live oak so thick the lawn under it hasn't seen sun in years. Dead wood in the crown that comes down a piece at a time onto the driveway. Good pruning fixes all of that without making the tree look like it was attacked.
What we do to a tree
Every pruning job starts with the dead wood — the limbs that are already going to fall, just not on your schedule. Then we thin: take out crossing and rubbing limbs and open the crown so wind moves through the canopy instead of loading one side. Then we raise, lifting the low limbs off the roof, the driveway and the sidewalk. Cuts are made at the branch collar so the tree can close them; no stubs, no flush cuts, no torn bark.
What we don't do is top trees. Cutting the leaders off an oak to "make it smaller" produces a burst of weakly attached growth that fails in the first real storm and opens the tree to decay. If someone told you to top it, call us first.
Pruning by tree, Marion County edition
- Live oaks: light thinning, deadwood, and lifting over structures — never more than the tree can spare in a year.
- Laurel oaks and water oaks: deadwood and weight reduction on long limbs; a check for decay while we're up there.
- Pines: dead limbs and roof clearance; pines don't take heavy pruning well.
- Maples, sweetgums, magnolias: shape and clearance, cut back to laterals.
- Palms are their own thing — see Palm Trimming.
Tell Us Which Tree And What It's Doing
When to prune
For most Marion County hardwoods the calm months of late winter are ideal, and anything before June is better than anything after. Oaks in particular do well when pruned while they're dormant. Dead wood can come out any time of year, and clearance off a roof or a power line shouldn't wait for the calendar. If the utility's lines are involved, we'll tell you what's ours to touch and what the utility has to handle.
Trimming before hurricane season
The biggest reason people call us in April and May is the one you'd expect: they want the oak over the bedroom lighter before the season starts. A thinned crown sheds wind; a dense one catches it like a sail. It's the least dramatic tree work we do and probably the most valuable.
