Palm Tree Trimming in Lakewood, CA
Dead fronds, seed pods, and the rat-friendly skirt at the top, all taken off and hauled away. Tall palms are our normal Tuesday.
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Palms here get ignored until they are sixty feet tall
Mexican fan palms went into front yards and along driveways all over this city when the tracts were new, and they have been climbing ever since. Queen palms came later, usually around pools and patios. Canary Island date palms, the thick ones with the pineapple crown, show up on the older and larger properties.
All three have the same problem: nothing about them looks urgent until the day a frond the size of a door lands on the hood of a car. A neglected palm is a maintenance job that gets more expensive every year, because every foot of extra height is more rope, more time, and more risk.
What a proper palm trim includes
- Dead and hanging fronds off. Everything brown, plus anything cracked at the base and waiting to drop.
- Seed pods and flower stalks removed. This is the one people forget. Queen palm fruit stains and rots on pool decks and driveways, and fan palm seed carries into every planter bed on the block.
- Skinning the trunk. On fan palms we can shave the old frond bases off the trunk for a clean, smooth column instead of the shaggy petticoat.
- Everything hauled. Palm fronds do not chip well and they fill a truck fast. That is part of the price, not an extra.
What we will not do is hurricane cut it. Shaving a palm down to a handful of upright fronds is the most common bad haircut in Southern California. It starves the palm, narrows the trunk at the top permanently, and leaves it far weaker in wind. We take the dead and the dying and leave the green canopy the palm needs to feed itself.
The rat problem nobody wants to bring up
The dead skirt of fronds hanging at the top of an untrimmed fan palm is prime roof rat habitat. It is dry, sheltered, and it sits at roof height next to your attic vents. Homeowners who have been fighting rats in the garage and cannot work out where they are coming from are very often looking straight at the answer in their own front yard. Clearing the skirt takes the nest site away.
Disease matters more with palms than with anything else
Fusarium wilt kills Canary Island date palms and it travels on pruning tools. A crew that runs the same unwashed chainsaw through six palms in one afternoon can carry the infection to every one of them, and there is no cure once it takes hold. We sterilize blades between palms, every time. It slows us down a little and it is not negotiable.
The same care applies to sharp, clean cuts at the frond base. Ragged tearing leaves wounds that invite pests, and palms cannot compartmentalize damage the way a broadleaf tree can.
When the palm should just come out
Sometimes the honest math is that a palm which now needs a climber every year should not be there at all. A fan palm that has outgrown a front yard, a queen palm dropping fruit into the pool every summer, or a collapsing crown after disease are all fair reasons to pull the palm out completely. Palms leave a dense fibrous stump that fights a shovel, so most people want the root ball ground out at the same visit.
Book palm work
Most yards have more than one palm, and pricing gets better per palm when we do them together. We can also handle any broadleaf trees on the same visit so you only pay for one trip. Call (562) 502-1431 or get a price on the whole row in writing.