How to tell if you have found a good tree surgeon

Trees are undoubtedly beautiful organisms, their impressive growth spanning several of your lifetimes and their varying aesthetic features that makes each particular species unique. To the strong robustness of a mighty oak tree, to the almost gracefully dancing tendrils of the willow tree that has encapsulated the hearts and minds of poets for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. However having a tree on your property is not always an easy or indeed a positive experience. Trees can not only cause disruption to the surrounding garden space (and sometimes even major structural damage to nearby buildings) when their root systems become too large, but also if they suffer damage or come under attack from an illness they too can become structurally insecure and become a potential hazard.

When this happens you will need to employ the services of a professional tree surgeon to rectify these issues to keep your property and safety secure. But it can be a difficult thing to ascertain the quality of the tree surgeon that you have opted to use and it can be a minefield as the improper treatment of a tree can actually hasten its decline and make the problem much worse. What are the key things that you want to keep in when assessing individual contractors and companies? Let’s discuss.

Reputation

In business, as it has always been since the dawn of capitalism, everything is about the reputation you hold in the minds of the people that have used your service previously and also to your target market. So when you asses anything a golden rule is to assess what their previous clients and customers have said about how they performed the job. There will probably be dozens of companies offering tree surgery services and all of them will undoubtedly claim to be the most experienced and fairly priced in your area. However you will want to take a look at the reviews of their service that you can find to ascertain exactly how truthful they are being with the information they are giving you.

Often times many companies will be able to give out the details of past clients who have agreed to act as a reference that the service provided is everything that they have said it is. However the problem is as this is a review coming through the business itself it isn’t exactly immune from doctoring and influence form them themselves and at the end of the day it can be difficult to ascertain the veracity of the contact details you have been given. So always make sure you do your own research to compare the reference to what other people have said.

Experience

Now while this is not a “be all and end all” sign of a great tree surgeon, it has to be said that experience in this field does make a huge difference. As we briefly touched on earlier, trees are living organisms and while it may seem like they are invincible and immune to most forms of physical damage, they are in some ways very fragile creatures and are in fact able to succumb to illness if pruned or otherwise treated incorrectly, which can lead to growth stunting and discoloration of bark and leaves on the more mild end of the spectrum to complete tree death in the most extreme. So you want to know that the company you deal with has the experience and knowledge of different tree species in order to ensure that you aren’t going to be inadvertently putting your tree in unnecessary risk.

So make sure that you have a chart with your intended surgeon about the problems you are having and question them on how they would go about tackling it, and whether they have dealt with similar problems in the past.

Lopping

Sometimes you won’t be looking for a full tree treatment and sometimes it will be more for decorative maintenance. And while this does make the process substantially easier you should always look to see proof of how their tree lopping services can make your garden so much neater and cleaner. They should have a readily available portfolio of before and after pictures in order to see the notable difference and to assess them yourself. They should be plentiful, in full colour with no filters and there should be a wide variety of pictures that clearly demonstrate their work.