At Good News Tree Service, Inc. in Wilsonville, Oregon, we don’t just talk about tree preservation, we actually do it—and our clients love it!

Go to the websites of most tree services, and you’ll find them bragging about the big trees they removed. The bigger the tree, the bigger and the better the tree service, so it seems. That’s not our philosophy, however.

Yes, we’ve done plenty of big trees over the decades. We even did full-scale logging for many years along with our other tree work. Been there, done that, as they say.

But since then, we’ve grown passionate about preserving every tree we can. Yes, we still take down plenty of trees because Mrs. Smith doesn’t like her tree any longer, because it has outgrown its spot, because it has became a hazard or a nuisance, or because it is dying and we can do nothing to bring it back to health.

But we get excited when we can save a tree that our client or other tree services recommended taking out. Sadly, the latter happens frequently! This is because many other tree services fail to inform Mrs. Smith about the options available to saving her tree, yet still mitigate her concerns. We educate our clients, provide them with options, and then let them make the choices. Often a valuable tree gets saved in the process

Here are some recent examples of trees we saved and their back story.

This birch tree was seriously devastated in last year’s epic ice storm. The people loved the tree, but thought it needed to be removed. After pruning out the broken wood and cutting the damaged trunk back to good wood, we let the tree regenerate itself, and a year later, here’s the same tree. By the end of this year’s growing season, it will look even better.

Here are some more examples of trees we saved from the saw. In these cases, another tree service wanted to remove these ice storm damaged trees in the common areas of this home owners association. In fact, these trees were red-flagged for removal. The competing tree service could have made big bucks removing them, grinding out the stumps and then replanting new trees.

Good News Tree Service was brought in for a second opinion, and we had good news for this HOA. Not only could these trees be saved, but we saved the HOA a boatload of money, helped the environment, and made the surrounding neighbors ecstatic over being able to save the trees. Since then, we have pruned them to make them look better since last year’s horrific ice storm. Reshaping them is still a work in progress and will continue as they regrow their ice-damaged tops.

One or two of these trees were so busted up that they were merely trunks with little or no side branches. Yet we knew that they’d put on a full crown of new foliage come spring, so we recommended keeping them. Now look at them!

Here is another tree we just saved the other day. In this case, Mr. Jones wanted this glorious Stewartia tree removed because the berries and other detritus from it were staining his expensive patio. Upon conversing with him, I realized that he really loved the tree, but he didn’t like the mess it was causing. I suggested keeping the tree and, instead of removing it, reshaping the crown so that it would no longer hang over his patio. He loved the idea and the results. Here are the before and after pictures.