Tree Service in Fort Wayne, IN

Tree service in Fort Wayne is shaped by three things: a lot of large, mature trees planted decades ago, summer storms that cross flat northeast Indiana with little to slow them down, and a city street-tree system with its own rules. Pro Tree Service Fort Wayne handles tree removal, tree trimming and pruning, stump grinding, storm work, ash trees and cabling for homes across the city and Allen County, and every job starts with a free visit and a written price.

Storms here come in summer and in ice

Fort Wayne averages about 39 thunderstorm days a year. The one most people remember is the derecho of June 29, 2012, when gusts reached 91 mph, about 78,000 customers lost power and roughly 500 trees were uprooted in the city. The city's own urban forestry plan also lists the December 2008 ice storm, which caused long outages and severe tree damage, and a May 2001 tornado on the north side. Wind and ice find the same weak points: long, heavy limbs, V-shaped forks with bark pinched between the stems, and trees with old decay at the base. Pruning those before storm season costs far less than a storm cleanup.

The ash borer years left a mark

The City of Fort Wayne was officially infested with emerald ash borer in 2006. Its street-tree inventory held about 14,000 ash at the time, and the city lost about 13,000 of them by 2014, when its ash removals were finished. Private yards, woodlots and fence rows went through the same loss, and some dead ash are still standing. Purdue Extension warns that dead ash become very brittle and can drop limbs or fall without warning, and that they are harder to remove than living ones. If you have an ash that is still healthy, Purdue's guidance is that trunk injections every three years can keep it alive.

Silver maples, oaks and the rest of the canopy

The city's forestry plan names silver maple as the tree doing most of the work in Fort Wayne's canopy. Silver maples grow fast and large, and their wood is weak, so they shed limbs and split at tight forks as they age. Oaks are a different concern: Purdue Extension reports oak wilt confirmed in more than 60 Indiana counties and advises pruning oaks from December through February, outside the months when beetles carry the fungus to fresh cuts. We plan oak pruning around that calendar.

Street trees belong to the city

Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation maintains almost 50,000 street trees. The right of way generally runs about 8 feet in from the curb, and the city says no one may do maintenance on a city-owned tree without permission from its forestry office. Requests to have a street tree looked at go through 311. Trees in alleys and on your lot are your responsibility, and those are the ones we work on. When we visit, we point out any tree that looks like it sits in the right of way before quoting.

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What happens to the brush

The city does not pick up limbs or brush left at the curb. Its posted rules allow small branches, cut to 3 feet, no thicker than 3 inches and tied in bundles of 60 pounds or less, to go out with the trash, and yard waste can be dropped at the Bio-Solids facility on Lake Avenue. For a full tree, that is a lot of trips. Our quotes say plainly whether brush is chipped and hauled, chips are left for mulch, and logs are cut to firewood length or taken away. Purdue asks people not to move firewood far, since it carries ash borer to new places, so wood from your yard is best burned or used close to home.

What an estimate includes

• Each tree's species, lean, dead wood and any decay or cracks we can see
• What sits under it: roof, garage, fence, driveway, a neighbor's yard
• Power lines and whether AEP needs to be called first
• How a climber, ropes, a lift or a chipper can reach the tree
• The stump, the brush and the wood, each with a clear answer
• A written price per tree before anything is cut

Fort Wayne is the center of our area, from the older neighborhoods near downtown and the boulevards laid out in the early 1900s to the postwar ranch streets and the newer subdivisions in Aboite and on the north side. We also work across Allen County and its edges: New Haven and Woodburn to the east, Huntertown, Leo-Cedarville and Grabill to the north, Roanoke and the Huntington area to the southwest, and Auburn, Columbia City and Decatur in the neighboring counties. Each place has its own mix. Older neighborhoods have big trees, tight lots and alleys; newer subdivisions have younger trees, HOA rules and utility lines along the back property line; rural lots have tree lines, fence rows and dead ash at the edge of fields. Every area page covers what we know about that town.