Tree, Shrub & Yard Services

Our specialty is helping your trees look as beautiful as possible. In keeping with the Japanese tradition—in which trees look their best when they look their most natural—we prune to make the tree appear as if it were pruned by nature. A skilled tree trimmer leaves a tree looking natural, even when 30% of its foliage is removed. While respecting the organic limits set by the natural form of each plant species, Brende & Lamb sculpts treescapes to fit the individual needs of each client for enhancing view, improving safety, maintaining screening, and insuring tree health. Tree beauty begins with tree health. We prune to maximize tree health by retaining enough foliage to feed the tree; pruning from the center outward and downward to achieve proper structure and balance; and maintaining branch composition on each main trunk or limb to allow it to develop strength, taper, and flexibility. When a tree artist finishes work the tree is healthier, more beautiful, and has a more natural look.

The goal of safety pruning is to reduce, through judicious pruning, the risk of tree failure––be that branch, column, or entire tree failure. We are expert at recognizing when a tree is unsafe or on its way to becoming unsafe; weak trunk crotches, heavy branches, and unbalanced tree structures often require measures such as cabling weakly-connected trunks, removing select branches, or simply lightening heavy branches. Brende & Lamb's expertise is also valuable in determining when a tree is safe and doesn't require pruning.

Determining whether safety pruning is necessary requires identification of likely paths of falling branches, and their “targets.” Danger of failure may exist, but the tree may be located where failure wouldn't cause significant damage to person or property. A tree above your child's nursery has different safety requirements than a tree in the middle of an open field. We frequently talk clients out of unnecessary pruning.

Safety Pruning includes the removal of dead and dying branches. Branches with insufficient taper to support their own weight require reduction of the mass on the end of the branch. This process, called ‘end-weight reduction,’ requires a finely tuned understanding of tree aesthetics for the pruned branch to retain its natural grace; when done poorly, the results of end-weight reduction are jarring. Trees with dense crowns sometimes require thinning. This reduces the “wind-sail” effect by allowing winds to pass more easily through the crown. Crown thinning reduces pressure on the trunks and roots. Though the emphasis in Safety Pruning is to reduce the likelihood of tree failure, if done by a tree artist the tree looks better, and more natural, at the end of the job.

Pruning to enhance view can be among the most satisfying, or the most frustrating, of pruning experiences. Revealing, in an aesthetic manner, a previously hidden view of the Golden Gate gives great pleasure to both the client and the tree trimmer. The frustration in view pruning comes when neighbors have contradictory ideas about the amount of foliage to be removed, or what constitutes aesthetic value in a tree. Some find no objections to a topped cedar, whereas others feel a topped eugenia to be crime against beauty itself. The conflict between view and foliage can become intense when a neighbor, who loves his tree, has planted a redwood that is gradually eating away a previously expansive view of the Bay. Many, but not all, view conflicts have pruning solutions. If the tree obscuring the view has the correct branch structure, it can be windowed to enhance tree aesthetics as well as provide a well-framed view of the ever-changing shoreline. Sometimes tree removal is an option that can serve everyone’s need, if the tree to be removed would be cause problems for the tree owner over the long run, regardless of view issues. Removal becomes more palatable when it is accompanied by replacing the view-blocking tree with a tree of equal or greater aesthetic value, one that will not grow into the view corridor. Replacing a black wood acacia blocking a view, and threatening to shed limbs on the tree owner's roof, with a coral trunk Sango-Kaku maple may well be in everyone’s interest. Negotiating view pruning among neighbors who have a less than friendly relationship requires an innate sense of fairness, psychology and diplomacy, as well as a solid understanding of tree health and aesthetics. It's not for the faint of heart, the impatient, or for trimmers with thin skins.

It is common in the Bay Area to encounter gardens that were once designed and planted with great care, but were never maintained. It is a great pleasure to transform an abandoned landscape to its former glory. Great care, a good eye, and lots of experience are necessary when clearing out the deadwood, identifying specimen plants, and teasing out the natural beauty hidden under the brambles. Expert restoration of an abandoned garden is far less expensive than replanting.

Many people choose to live in the Bay Area because we maintain a close connection with wild lands. Our lovely urban-wild-land interface brings risk as well as reward, wildfires being among the most dangerous. Brende&Lamb knows how to prune your landscape to reduce the risk of wildfire without sacrificing the wild-land feel. This requires knowledge of how fires move through the landscape, and an understanding of how to inhibit that movement by breaking up fire ladders and creating fire breaks.

Soils are complex ecosystems that include many species of bacteria and fungi. Most of those microorganisms are beneficial. Some are not. When the balance is tipped to favor the unhealthy species, trees suffer. Many serious tree diseases can be traced to unhealthy soils. Throughout much of the East Bay we have soils with high clay content. Densely packed clays lack the pores necessary to conduct oxygen when wet. Soils with poor drainage and low porosity promote fungi that harm trees while repressing fungi that help trees absorb nutrients. It is possible to improve the soil by mulching, by aerating, and by treating the soils with spores from beneficial fungi. Improving soil health is one of the few ways to combat diseases that attack tree roots. Promoting healthy soils helps protect your trees, and your investment in your landscape.

Some tree have structural problems than can't be fixed by pruning alone. Trees that have necessary branches growing out of weak crotches sometimes need to have the branches cabled together. Usually cabling is possible such that the cables are visible only when you look for them. There are rare circumstances when trees need to have through bolts installed to protect fragile columns. There exist even rarer circumstances when branches require external supports, usually metal posts. Brende&Lamb teams with Wick Pancoast of Pancoast construction to install braces on beloved ancient trees.

Because we focus on aesthetics, Brende and Lamb does not bid on removals of large trees. However, we are competitive on removal of medium and small trees (trees under 50 feet tall and less than 24 inches in diameter). We take great care to preserve under-story plants, and to leave the removal site undamaged and tidy.