Tree Service in Shreveport, LA

Tree service in Shreveport is mostly a story about wind and water. The city gets about 51 inches of rain a year spread over roughly 100 wet days, and its spring and summer bring severe thunderstorms with damaging winds, hail and the occasional tornado. Winters are short but not harmless: Shreveport averages about 35 days at or below freezing, and ice or sleet storms can coat limbs that were never built to carry the weight. Add summers with more than 90 days above 90 degrees and you get trees that are stressed by drought in August and soaked at the roots in April, which is exactly when a tall tree is most likely to fail.

The trees that give Shreveport homeowners trouble

Northwest Louisiana sits at the edge of the piney woods, so many yards have tall loblolly or shortleaf pines next to water oaks, willow oaks, pecans, sweetgums and planted live oaks. They do not all behave the same in a storm. LSU AgCenter ranks live oak, bald cypress and southern magnolia among the most wind-resistant trees in the state, and puts water oak, laurel oak, southern red oak, pecan, Bradford pear and Chinese elm among the least. LSU AgCenter also notes that water oak trunks often start to rot by about age 50, and that water oaks with short, shallow roots in heavy clay tend to uproot or snap in high winds. A lot of Shreveport's water oaks were planted when the neighborhoods around them were built, so many are at or past that age now.

Pines, beetles and lightning

Pines are their own category. A pine that has been struck by lightning, battered by wind or cooked by a dry summer is exactly the kind of tree southern pine beetles look for; loblolly and shortleaf are among their main hosts, and the first sign is often small whitish lumps of resin on the bark that look like popcorn. Ips engraver beetles are more common on single stressed pines, and the Texas A&M Forest Service, working in the same pine country just across the state line, notes that a hit pine's needles can go from green to yellow to red in about three weeks in late summer. Once a pine is dead, it starts to decay within months. If it stands where it could reach your house, it should not wait for the next storm season.

Close-set lots and older neighborhoods

Much of Shreveport is single-family homes: about 73 percent of its housing units are detached houses, and a little over half are owner-occupied. In the city's older neighborhoods, from Highland and Fairfield to South Highlands, Broadmoor and Pierremont, those houses sit on narrow-to-medium lots under big, mature trees. Highland and Fairfield were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as historic districts in 1987, and South Highlands in 1999. That means tall trees over roofs, carports and back fences, limbs reaching over the neighbor's yard, and service wires running through the canopy. We plan those jobs piece by piece: limbs rigged and lowered rather than dropped, wood cut small enough to carry out a side gate, and a crane only when it is truly the safest way to lift a tree out over a house.

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Street trees, HOAs and power lines

A tree on your own lot is generally your call. Shreveport's Unified Development Code does not set up a heritage or protected-tree list for private yards; its tree rules mostly apply to landscape plans for new development, which earn credit for saving trees 8 inches or more in caliper. The neutral strip between the sidewalk and the curb is a little different. The city's Streets & Drainage division says those trees are normally maintained by the property owner, and its forestry crew will look at one and advise you if you call 318-673-6330; that same crew removes dead limbs and dead trees in the city right-of-way itself. Planting a new tree in the right-of-way calls for notifying Public Works or SPAR first. Some subdivisions add association rules, and homes in the city's local historic districts, such as South Highlands or St. Paul's Bottoms, go through the Historic Preservation Commission for exterior changes, so a call to MPC staff before removing a street-facing tree there is worth the time. Power lines are SWEPCO's: the utility keeps the primary, secondary and neutral wires on its poles clear, and the line from the pole to your house is the owner's responsibility to keep free of limbs, with SWEPCO disconnecting it for the work if you call at least two working days ahead.

What our estimate covers

• Species, lean, dead wood, cracks, fungus and decay at the base of each tree
• What sits under it: roof, carport, pool, fence, driveway, the neighbor's yard
• Wires and whether SWEPCO needs to be called first
• Access for climbers, ropes, a chipper, a lift or a crane
• What happens to the logs, chips, brush and stump
• A written price for each tree, with nothing added without your approval

Shreveport is the middle of our map. Across the Red River we work in Bossier City, Haughton, Benton and the subdivisions around Barksdale Air Force Base; to the north in Blanchard, Vivian and the Cross Lake and Caddo Lake shorelines; to the south in Keithville, Stonewall and toward Mansfield; and west toward Greenwood and the Texas line. The weather is the same across all of it, so storm damage, beetle-killed pines and old water oaks come up everywhere. What changes is the ground and the lot: older city neighborhoods with tight access, newer Bossier subdivisions with young trees and HOA rules, and rural acreage where pines crowd houses and drives. Each area page covers what we know about that place.