Tree Service in Oshawa, Ontario

Where we work in the city

We cover Oshawa end to end: the older core around Simcoe Street and Bond, the neighbourhoods off Ritson and Wilson, north through Taunton and Kedron, west toward Whitby along Thornton, and south into the industrial and lakeshore edge below Bloor. Courtice sits between us and Oshawa, so getting a truck and the Merlo grapplesaw telehandler across the city is a twenty minute run from the shop in Bowmanville, not a job we have to price travel into.

Oshawa's canopy is older than most

Oshawa grew earlier and denser than the towns east of it, and the tree stock shows it. Streets near the core were planted with Norway maple, silver maple and elm generations ago. What is standing now is often eighty to a hundred years old, seventy feet tall, and sitting nine feet off a brick house with a service drop running through the crown. Those trees are worth keeping when they are sound, but they need real pruning, deadwood removal and sometimes crown reduction rather than the topping cut that a lot of them have had done to them in the past. Topping is the single most common damage we see in Oshawa, and it is what turns a healthy maple into a hazard fifteen years later. What that looks like is in why not to top a tree, and the cuts to ask for instead are in the Durham pruning guide.

Post-war neighbourhoods off Ritson and Park Road are full of Colorado and Norway spruce planted as small ornamentals that are now dominating front yards, plus honey locust and ash along the boulevards. The ash story is the same as everywhere in Durham: emerald ash borer has finished them, and the dead ones are brittle enough that we take them apart with the machine rather than send a climber into them.

North Oshawa above Taunton is newer, tighter lots with smaller trees but very little room to work. Pear, birch, maple cultivars and cedar hedging, all packed between houses with no side yard to speak of. That is rigging work, piece by piece over a fence, and it is worth having someone do it who is not guessing.

Wind, lake and weather

South Oshawa toward the harbour and Lakeview Park catches the wind straight off Lake Ontario. Trees down there grow with a lean and root plates that have been worked loose over years of steady pressure. After a big southwest blow we get uprooted willows and poplars along the lakeshore, and stripped limbs from silver maples further inland. Ice storms are the other one. The 2013 ice event is still visible in the crowns of half the older trees in this city, in the form of stubbed limbs and decay pockets where they broke.

If a tree is leaning after a storm, the ground on the uphill side is heaved, or you can see fresh cracks at a stem union, that is a call to make the same day. We prioritize emergency work in Oshawa and will make the hazard safe first, then finish the tree properly afterwards.

Tight access is the norm here

Half of Oshawa's problem trees are in backyards you cannot drive into. Our Merlo grapplesaw telehandler is narrower than a bucket truck and can walk down a side yard, grab a section, cut it and carry it out without a rope ever swinging over a roof. We have pulled sixty foot trees out of a gap between two houses with it. Where even that will not fit, a climber goes up and the tree comes down on ropes and speedlines into a driveway drop zone.

Street parking, transit routes and hydro all get factored in before we start. Where a wire has to be sleeved or dropped we arrange that ahead of the day rather than finding out at eight in the morning.

Permits: Oshawa is not Clarington

Oshawa does not use Clarington's tree by-law. The permit guide on this site says Oshawa has no private tree by-law, so a tree on your own residential lot is generally yours to deal with. A woodland of about one hectare or more still falls under Durham's woodland by-law, and a City-owned street tree is never yours. Confirm with the City before you rely on that, because by-laws change. Pruning an ordinary yard tree is a different question from removal, and we have not confirmed a separate Oshawa pruning permit.

Everything else we do in Oshawa

Removals, pruning and trimming, stump grinding and chipping, hedge work, lot and brush clearing, road and driveway clearance, forestry mulching, tree preservation, and 24/7 storm response. Every job gets cleaned up: brush chipped, logs stacked or hauled, lawn blown off. Fully insured, with proof of insurance available before we start. Call or text (289) 675-8777.

For details on how a takedown is planned and priced, see our tree removal page. We are based one town east in Bowmanville, and the home page has our recent work and the full service area map.