Discover Our Tree Care Solutions

At Southern Maryland Tree Service, Troy Proctor and our team extend a warm welcome to property owners and risk managers seeking reliable insights into their trees’ well-being. Our tree risk assessments are designed to empower you with the information needed to make informed decisions about your trees’ health, benefits, and longevity. With proficiency in both limited-visual and basic tree risk assessment fundamentals, we are here to address all your tree-related needs. Trust us for a friendly and expert approach to ensure the well-being and beauty of your trees.

Deadwooding is the removal of dead branches. Dead branches can be a normal activity of trees and does not necessarily mean the tree is sick or dying. An arborist can give you a better understanding if this is a normal characteristic for the type and age of your tree. Removing dead wood can help reduce risks of doing damage to your property or people. Deadwooding is much easier during the growing season when foliage is still on the tree. Another thing with dead wood pruning is defining the size of the dead wood. We will clearly define a minimum size of limb in thickness so that way we are certain to meet and try our best to exceed your expectations.

End weight reduction is an area we specialize in. The main point is to prevent breaks. Trees don’t heal they seal, they seal off to limit the spread of decay. But like just us (people) the size of wood will also determine the speed of closure of the wound, the bigger the cut the more time it will take, the more opportunity and higher rate of disease has to enter the tree. Also the placement of the cut when we put in the structural stability. It takes a lot more skill from the climber to get out to the end of the branches but can have the best results and least amount of damage for your tree. We do what’s best for your tree not what’s easiest for us.

Young tree pruning most trees from the nursery are grown to grow as fast as possible to get to a size to be sold to maximize profits. Structure and health can often be a second priority to growth. Young trees are a great time to prune for structure and young trees (when planted correctly) have much more vigor and can tolerate more aggressive pruning. We like to suggest that trees are given the first year to grow and establish a strong root system before structural pruning.

We prune so that branches are not rubbing and crossing each other which can lead to branch wounds and which can create a opportunity for decay and disease to enter the branch. When a tree is too dense it can cause many problems with health and structural weakness. When wind impacts a tree that is too dense it can force the tree to have a windsail affect making the tree more vulnerable to failing at the stem or uprooting completely.

Removing some of the bottom branches is sometimes necessary to give clearance to structures or so the people have enough room to walk under the tree. Removing bottom branches may also open up a view where the bottom branches were blocking. We run into this many time on houses right on a body of water. But we try to keep this as minimal as possible because when you raise a trees canopy it alters the live crown ratio and make it less stable remember branches help dissipitate wind. Also when raising a tree you are cutting the oldest branches off which are going to be the biggest branches leaving learge cuts that will take longer to seal off. It is best to do this gradually and early when the tree is young.