Tree Trimming & Pruning — BC Tree Service, South St. Louis

What we actually mean by “trimming.”

Half the calls we get for “trimming” are really pruning, and a fair number of trees we look at have been topped or over-thinned by someone else who shouldn’t have been on the rope. So let’s be specific about what we do:

Crown raise

Removing the lowest branches so you can mow under it, walk under it, or stop dragging across your roofline. Most common job we run.

Crown clean & deadwood

Taking out dead, diseased, broken, or crossing branches. This is the move that gets your tree another 20 years — lets light in, drops weight on the limbs that matter, and stops rot from spreading through the canopy.

Crown reduction

When the tree is taller or wider than the site can handle — touching the house, brushing the power line, leaning over the neighbor’s roof — we make reduction cuts back to appropriate lateral branches. Not topping. Topping kills trees and we don’t do it.

Clearance & structural pruning

Sidewalk, street, driveway, mailbox, garage. We trim young trees for structure so you don’t end up with three competing leaders in fifteen years.

The one thing we won’t do

We don’t top trees. If someone’s told you topping is a way to keep a big tree small, they’re wrong — topping rots the trunk from the inside, creates weak suckers, and shortens the tree’s life by decades. Reduction cuts back to live laterals are a different thing entirely. We’ll walk you through what your tree actually needs.

Timing.

In St. Louis, most deciduous trees prune best in late winter (Jan–March), before bud break. Oaks especially — we avoid pruning oaks April–July to dodge oak wilt. Light summer trims for deadwood and clearance are fine year-round. If you’re calling about a storm-damaged limb or something dangerous, that’s an anytime job.