Backyard Tree Removal: Before and After Photos

April 4, 2014

With our new house, we’ve spent the majority of our time working on the inside – repairing and improving things. We’ve given some, but not much, thought to the outside. There’s a large backyard for us to figure out what to do with… but landscaping plans are most definitely a backburner item for now.

There is one exception though, and that has to do with our trees in back. We had several trees that were problematic, in terms of their size and locations.

One in particular was this massive guy, protruding from our yard and hovering well over in the neighbor’s yard. It’s hard to really do justice to the scale of the thing, but on first seeing it… Liz and I were both concerned regarding the potential damage it might do to the neighbor’s house (and ours).

Another tree closer to the house, that was growing into the electric lines. In addition to these two larger trees, we had a few stumps and one decaying tree to also get rid of.

Looking around online, we found a company called The Care of Trees and I corresponded with a man named Dan Krug. He was incredibly professional in his emails, and went above and beyond answering questions and showing us a full breakdown of what each task cost: cutting down the trees, grinding down the stumps to about six or eight inches below ground level, and hauling away all debris.

After conferring with Dan, we decided to remove all the trees in the backyard. The large mulberry (the big monster) had a lot of cracks and defects, and had a growing area of decay in the main stem.

Cutting down the trees was not a decision Liz and I made lightly. I know how long trees take to grow, and there’s a large part of me that felt terrible about removing something so large. Additionally, it’s no cheap thing to do – so if we could have avoided this, we would have.

One of our neighbors (Andrew) mentioned how he used to climb the large mulberry tree, growing up here as a kid. Andrew is slightly older than me, and it’s an odd thing… to be someone who now is responsible for removing this element of another person’s memory/childhood.

The whole process took two days. The workers showed up the first day around 8AM, and on arriving back at the house after work… we saw a large stump near the front driveway.

In back, much of the large mulberry was taken care of – with large logs scattered throughout our yard, as well as the neighbor’s yard.

Liz, posing for reference. The mulberry was one really, really big guy.

Another tree in the SE corner of the yard.

The stump of the large mulberry.

A whole lot of rings…

Looking West, from the furthest point in the yard.

Logs that were left in our neighbor’s yard for the day.

Looking at where the mulberry once stood.

This photo was taken the following day. On arriving home, we walked into the backyard… and everything was gone.

The ground rises up a great deal, where the mulberry used to be.

All the backyard, cleared away…

It’s highly unlikely that we’ll be doing much with the backyard anytime soon. But we found out that winter is the best time to do work on trees, as the cold ground makes it easier to do the stump work. Once the weather gets warmer and the ground softens up… it makes things harder.

Sad to see everything go, and I wish there was a way we could have kept that larger Mulberry. While we won’t be doing a lot with the yard just yet, we’ve gotten the first step down – ailing trees removed and all the stumps ground down.

backyard liz our first home

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