Kaustubh Deo

Hi there — I run a tree company in Seattle, which isn’t Zone 5b. But if you google “SDOT planting guide”, you should be able to find SDOT’s selection tool for planting street trees based on shade/height/water/etc.

Once you find a few plants that meet your requirements, you could then check if they grow well in Zone 5b.

Oh giving away arborist wood chips is easy! We generate so much of them. We actually maintain a wood chip list, who we contact when we're in their area and have a truck full of chips to dump.

If you're in the greater Seattle area, you're welcome to join our chip drop list by filling out this form: https://forms.gle/Rd2pR6sjzty4uZLMA

That makes a ton of sense, Nancy! Not planning to promote ourselves (but put the link in my sig like you suggested). Thanks for pointing me to the trees forum, I'll keep an eye on that one in particular! Hopefully we can help folks out.

Hi folks,

I run a tree service in Seattle called Blooma Tree Experts. We are locally-owned & operated (I live in the Ballard area personally) -- we've been around since 2007 serving the greater Seattle area community. We pride ourselves on being trusted arborist advisors to clients, and being a great small business employer as well for our talented crew.

I'm brand new to this community/forum -- I created an account because I'm curious to see if there are ways we can serve the community given the type of work we do is usually beyond the capabilities of even the most resourceful folks simply for safety reasons. (I could be wrong about that -- no worries if so!)

Our team consists of ISA-Certified Arborists and experienced tree climbers, so we can handle pruning deadwood or hanging branches from 100+ foot tall trees to mitigate safety hazards. Generally speaking, mature trees don't need much pruning (<15% of canopy), but given we are trying to co-exist with these majestic trees and protect them even in urban/close-to-urban settings, we feel it's important to proactively manage them to promote healthy growth that doesn't lead to future safety issues. Similarly, we often do structural pruning of younger trees to help "train" them to grow in ways that will allow them to become mature trees without coming into conflict with your homes or other issues.

We specialize in tree pruning and tree healthcare -- we take a lot of pride in getting to help the Seattle community have beautiful trees. If you have questions about tree care, we're happy to be a resource (I'll have to ask our arborists to reply to any specific questions of course), so just let us know if any specific topics would be useful for this forum.

Anyway, we'll mostly be readers here, just trying to understand how this community thinks about & talks about trees. But happy to answer any specific questions where we can!! You can also check us out directly at https://www.bloomatree.com/

Thanks,
Kaustubh