4.9 · 462 Google reviews · Licensed & Insured
Tree Removal in Largo, Florida
Largo tree removal with the city permit handled, stump ground and debris hauled the same visit. Arborist assesses first. (727) 365-1803.
“Happy trees did an amazing job cutting my trees and providing information. Steve was really nice and knowledgeable. Great communication and pricing. Definitely will be using their service again!!”
- 462 Google reviews
- Licensed & Insured
- ISA Certified Arborist on staff
- Pinellas since 1989
Largo sits in the middle of the peninsula, and that geography shows up in the trees. A live oak on Gulf Boulevard gets salt-pruned and wind-sheared its whole life and stays compact. The same species on a lot off Rosery Road, four miles inland with nothing but other houses between it and the water, grows straight up and fills out, bigger crown, longer limbs, far more sail area, and a great deal more weight over whatever is underneath it.
Which, in Largo, is usually a screen enclosure.
The screen-cage problem
The city’s housing stock is heavily 1960s through 1980s: single-story block homes on quarter-acre lots, with a pool and an aluminum cage bolted to the back of the house. Forty years later the oak that was planted at the corner of the lot is sixty feet tall, and half its canopy hangs over a structure that will not survive a dropped limb, let alone a dropped section of trunk.
That removal is not a chainsaw job. It is a rigging job, and how it gets done is the whole difference between a clean invoice and an insurance claim:
Crane removal
where the tree can be picked in sections and flown clear of the cage entirely. Fastest, cleanest, and the only sensible answer over a pool.
Speed-line and lowering-device rigging
where a crane cannot get a set-up, so each piece is controlled down a line to a landing zone away from the structure.
Grapple truck
for the loading, so the wood leaves the property without a bobcat crossing your irrigation and your septic drainfield.
Happy’s brings the right machine: lifts, grapple trucks, and a crane when the pick calls for it. The person who looks at your screen enclosure and says "we can pick that" is the person who has to be right about it, so the assessment happens before the estimate.
Largo trees, honestly assessed
Two species account for most of what we take down here. Live oak is the good one: strong wood, sound structure, worth keeping and worth spending money on. Laurel oak is the one that gets people hurt, UF/IFAS puts its useful life at 50 to 70 years, and it hollows from the inside while the canopy still looks fine. If your Largo tree went in with the house in 1972, that is a species question worth answering before it becomes a storm question.
The older core near Largo Central Park still carries some genuinely large specimens, and the oak hammock at Heritage Village over at Pinewood Cultural Park is a decent local reference for what a well-structured live oak is supposed to look like. Eagle Lake Park, on the other side of Keene Road, was a citrus grove before it was a park, which is why so many of the surrounding older lots still have the odd surviving grapefruit or orange in the back yard.
Start here
Send us a photo of the tree.
You do not have to know whether it needs to come down. That is the part we are for.
- One photo, whole tree in frameTrunk base to top. A close-up of anything that looks wrong helps.
- Text us the photoThe text button below opens the right thread. Add your street and city.
- We come out and lookEvery estimate is in person, free, sometimes the answer is that it needs nothing.
Permits: two codes, one parcel
Pinellas County’s tree ordinance (Ch. 58, Art. XIX, adopted January 2026) applies inside Largo city limits. A municipal ordinance prevails only where it conflicts with the county rule, so a Largo parcel is generally read against both.
The county thresholds: protected at 4 inches DBH, all palms 6 feet or taller protected, and a higher 24-inch DBH threshold for properties with a Pinellas County homestead exemption, an existing single-family detached house, and genuine residential occupancy. Removing a protected tree without authorization is $150 per DBH inch, and the liability is joint and several between owner and contractor, and it follows the property even after a sale.
Largo’s own code. Comprehensive Development Code Chapter 10 (Landscape Standards), principally § 10.7.2, administered by the Planning Division with the City Arborist doing the field check. § 10.7.2(B)(2) requires a permit to remove or alter any tree of 4 inches caliper or greater, or any palm with 4.5 feet or more of clear trunk. It applies on any site in the City regardless of use or land use designation, there is no residential carve-out. CDC § 20.1 sums all stems on a multi-stemmed understory species, and the definition carries no hazard, dead or dying exclusion. Mangroves may not be removed at all. Largo permit detail.
There is also a state route. Florida Statute § 163.045 removes the permit requirement outright for a single-family detached home when an ISA Certified Arborist documents, under ISA tree-risk-assessment standards, that removal is the only practical way to bring the risk below moderate. We have that certification in-house. We also do not stretch it, if your tree does not meet the standard, we file the permit.
Get a number
Call (727) 365-1803 for a free Largo tree removal estimate. If the tree can be saved with structural pruning instead, we would rather sell you that.
Frequently asked questions
Can you take a tree out over my pool cage without damaging it? That is the standard Largo job. With a crane set-up we lift sections straight up and away from the enclosure; where a crane cannot reach, everything is rigged and lowered on a line. We will tell you at the estimate which method your lot allows.
Do I need a permit to remove a tree in the City of Largo? Plan on it. Pinellas County’s Article XIX applies within Largo, protecting trees from 4 inches DBH and palms from 6 feet, with a 24-inch threshold for occupied homesteaded single-family properties, and Largo has its own code alongside it. We check the parcel before any saw comes off the truck.
The tree is already dead. Surely that’s exempt? Not automatically. The county’s Article XIX contains no dead-tree, storm or emergency exemption. A dead tree grades as "0, Poor," which means it can be removed with an approved permit and without replanting obligations. The genuine exemption is the F.S. § 163.045 arborist route.
Do you haul the wood away, or do I get a pile of logs? A grapple truck comes with the crew, so the wood goes. Stump grinding is a separate line item and we will quote it either way.
Google reviews
Rated 4.9 by 462 of your neighbors.
Reviews · Tree Removal in Largo, Florida
4.9
462 reviews on Google, the count on our public Google listing
“Fast quote and when we decided it was time to remove our Oak, they were there on time and ready to get to work. They have all the equipment necessary for this huge job and work very efficiently.”
“Steven was great, him and his crew got out early and was here all day taking out my four laurel oaks for me. Start to finish it was a pleasure working with happy tree service. The speed and efficiency of the work was fantastic.”
Every one of these lives on our public Google listing, where we cannot edit or delete a word. Read them all on Google →