Tree Trimming in Chatham

Chatham is a fast-growing commuter town just south of Springfield that has seen a lot of residential construction since the 1990s. Most of the housing stock consists of single-family homes in planned subdivisions, many with young to mid-age trees planted during development. The town sits along the edge of the Sangamon River watershed, and some newer neighborhoods back up to wooded lots. Tree trimming here tends to be proactive maintenance on younger trees rather than emergency work on giants.

Overgrown or dead branches drop fast during the ice storms that hit central Illinois every winter. Springfield sits in a wide-open prairie with no natural windbreak, so trees here take the full force of those storms. A lot of the older neighborhoods like Iles Park and Laurel Hills have silver maples and cottonwoods that were planted in the 1960s and are now pushing 60 feet tall — those limbs get heavy, and heavy limbs fall.

We look at the tree in person before we quote anything, because a photo doesn't show a hollow trunk or a root system heaving up against a foundation. We cut to the branch collar — that's the slight ridge where the branch meets the trunk — so the tree seals itself over instead of rotting from an open wound left by a flush cut.