Tree service in Austin, Texas

What I see in Austin yards

Austin runs city arborist review and permitting with its own protected and heritage tiers, and it's the one place where getting the sequence wrong is genuinely expensive. Beyond the rules: east Austin sits on black prairie clay, west Austin sits on limestone, and the same species behaves differently on either side of MoPac.

The trees I get called about in Austin

It depends entirely on which side of town you're on — east Austin's black clay grows pecan, cedar elm and hackberry; west Austin's limestone grows live oak and ashe juniper. Citywide, the two things I'm called about most are oak wilt, which is well established in Travis County, and limb failure on mature live oaks. The February 2023 ice storm did enormous damage to Austin's canopy and a lot of what I still see are trees carrying broken, hung-up or badly torn limbs from it.

How to tell these species apart, and what goes wrong with each one.

Austin is four different tree towns

The Balcones Escarpment runs through the middle of the city, and it splits the tree work in two: thin soil over limestone on the west side, deep Blackland clay on the east. Same species, different failure modes, different access problems.

West, east, central and south Austin, one page each.

The ground underneath: Blackland Prairie

Deep black clay that swells when it's wet and shrinks hard when it's dry. Post oak, blackjack oak, cedar elm, American and winged elm, sugarberry, green ash and honey mesquite. That soil movement is constantly shearing fine roots, and it's behind more mystery decline than any disease.

Austin's tree ordinance

Austin regulates by trunk diameter measured 4.5 feet off the ground. Under 19 inches on residential property, the city doesn't regulate it — that's the sentence most homeowners never get told. At 19 inches and up, any species is a Protected tree and needs a permit to remove. At 24 inches and up, oaks, pecan, American and cedar elm, bald cypress, Texas ash, Texas madrone, bigtooth maple and Arizona or eastern black walnut become Heritage trees, and removing one is prohibited except under section 25-8-641. Removals that aren't tied to construction go through a Tree Ordinance Review Application, and there's a separate track for dead, diseased and imminent-hazard trees.

Source: City of Austin — Tree Reviews and Permitting. Confirm with the city before anything comes down — rules change.

How the rules compare across every town I work in

Working on a Austin property

Anything from alley-accessible east side lots to hillside west side properties where nothing bigger than a wheelbarrow gets in. Central Austin adds a real constraint people forget: nowhere to put the truck and chipper. If your street is narrow and permit-parked, tell me.

Questions I get from Austin

Getting me out to Austin

Austin is about a 30-minute run for me. Call or text me a photo with something in frame for scale and I can usually give you a number without driving out. Estimates are free either way.

One rule that applies everywhere, including here: don't prune oaks between February 1 and June 30. Here's why.