Tree Service in Orono, Ontario

Where we work in Orono

The village along Main Street and the streets either side of it, the properties backing onto the Crown Lands, the fairgrounds end, Orono Creek and the low ground it runs through, and the farms, bush lots and concession roads spreading north toward the moraine and east toward Kirby and Leskard.

Orono is a short run north from the shop. It prices the same as Bowmanville, with no travel allowance on the quote.

A village that grew trees for a living

The Orono Forestry Station, the provincial tree nursery, opened in 1922 and did not close until 1996. Six hundred and thirty-three acres of it is now the Orono Crown Lands. Seventy-four years of a nursery operating in one place leaves a mark on the surrounding landscape that you can still read: species planted deliberately, in rows, in numbers, and often in places nobody would choose today.

Practically, that means Orono has an unusual amount of planted conifer for this part of Ontario. Red Pine and Scots Pine in plantation rows, White Spruce and Norway Spruce in windbreaks and shelterbelts, and Larch. Plantation conifer that was never thinned grows tall, thin and top-heavy, with all its live crown in the top fifth of the tree and nothing holding the lower stem. Those trees come down in wind as a group, not one at a time.

If you have a row or a block of pine on your property that has never been touched, it is worth a proper look before the next big blow rather than after it. Thinning a neglected plantation is real work and it is not cheap, but it is a great deal cheaper than clearing a dozen stems off a fence line, a roof or a laneway.

The village hardwood is the other half

The old core of Orono has serious mature deciduous trees standing over houses that are as old as they are. Sugar Maple down the streets, big Ash, Black Walnut on the deeper lots, White Pine left from before the village was there, and the occasional deliberate specimen somebody planted a century ago and nobody has properly maintained since.

Trees like that are an asset and are usually worth keeping. The work is deadwood removal, selective thinning where a crown has closed in on itself, and dealing with rubbing or badly attached limbs, spread over a cycle of years rather than done in one heavy hit. We do not top and we do not lion-tail. Stripping the interior growth off a limb and leaving a tuft on the end makes it whip and eventually fail, and it has been done to trees in this village. There is more on the reasoning behind that on the pruning page and in the guide on why not to top a tree.

Ash is the standing problem here as everywhere else in Durham. Emerald Ash Borer went through and a dead Ash does not stay safe to work for long: the wood goes brittle and every season it stands adds cost and risk to taking it down. The full picture is in what to do with a dead Ash.

Bush lots, the moraine and the rural roads

North of the village the ground rises toward the Oak Ridges Moraine and the properties get bigger and more wooded. Bush lot work here is thinning, hazard removal along trails and laneways, clearing windthrow after a storm, and taking out the standing dead that accumulates in any woodlot nobody manages.

Work in or near a woodlot can sit under municipal tree bylaw or conservation authority rules depending on where the line falls and how much is coming out. We are not a permit service and we will not pretend to be your authority on it. What we will do is say at the quote when a job looks like it needs a check first, because that is a much better conversation to have beforehand.

The concession roads out here are also exactly where 24/7 storm response earns its keep, because one tree across a rural road closes the only way in or out. And where the job is bigger than trimming, it becomes lot and brush clearing: opening a building envelope, reclaiming a grown-in field edge, or clearing scrub off ground nobody has touched in twenty years.

Everything we do in Orono

Tree removal, pruning and trimming, stump grinding, hedge and shrub work, lot and brush clearing, plantation and windbreak thinning, laneway and roadside clearance, and 24/7 storm and emergency response.

Fully insured with proof available up front, WSIB covered, and the site cleaned down properly before we leave. Free on-site estimates anywhere in the village or on the roads around it.

We come up from Bowmanville, and we work Newcastle to the south and Hampton to the west.