4.9 · 462 Google reviews · Licensed & Insured
Tree Trimming & Pruning in Pinellas Park, FL
Pinellas Park canopy thinning, deadwood removal and clearance work before storm season - houses, parks and commercial lots. ANSI A300 cuts. (727) 365-1803.
“This was the second time I'd hired Happy's to take down some dead trees and I couldn't be happier with the job they did. First off they gave me a great price for the amount of work I needed done.”
- 462 Google reviews
- Licensed & Insured
- ISA Certified Arborist on staff
- Pinellas since 1989
The pines came with the land. Before the ditches and the plat, this was pine flatwoods, and the slash pines still standing on older Pinellas Park lots and along the park edges at Helen Howarth and Freedom Lake are the remnant of it. They are not landscape trees that somebody chose. They are what was here.
They also need to be pruned completely differently from an oak, and almost nobody does it.
Pines are not oaks. The mistakes are permanent.
A live oak that is cut badly will sprout back from old wood and eventually cover the error. A pine will not. Slash pine has no dormant buds in old wood to break, remove a limb and that space in the crown is empty for the life of the tree. Cut the top out and you have a permanently deformed tree with a decay column in the leader.
So pine work is conservative by necessity:
- Dead lower limbs removed at the collar, pines self-prune from the bottom and drop those limbs eventually anyway.
- Broken tops and storm hangers taken out cleanly.
- No lion-tailing. Stripping the interior of a pine’s limbs and leaving tufts on the ends is the single most common thing done to Florida pines and it moves all the weight to the tip of the lever. It is exactly backwards.
- Nothing removed from the live crown without a reason you could defend.
Pines are also the trees that take lightning. Tampa Bay sits in the most lightning-struck region of the United States, and a tall, isolated pine on a flat Pinellas Park lot is the tallest thing for a hundred yards. A strike track, a strip of split, blown bark running down one side of the trunk, is often the reason a pine that looked fine last year is fading this year. It is worth having somebody who knows what they are looking at walk the trunk.
The oaks, the palms and the road corridors
The residential streets, the Mainlands, the blocks off 66th and 70th, the 1960s and 70s subdivisions either side of Park Boulevard, carry the same mid-century oak stock as the rest of mid-county, on the same schedule of interior deadwood and canopy sitting on low roofs. Crown cleaning and crown raising handle most of it.
Along Park Boulevard, 49th Street and the US 19 frontage, the constraint is the overhead line and the traffic rather than the tree. Utility line clearance is cut to a conductor-clearance specification, not to an arboricultural one, and restoring the shape of a tree afterwards is separate work.
Cabbage palms get dead fronds and seed stalks off and green fronds left on. The one thing we will not do is the shaved "hurricane cut", it weakens the palm and buys nothing.
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.
Severe pruning is regulated here
Pinellas County’s tree code defines "effectively remove" to include topping, defoliating and excessive root pruning. A tree that is effectively removed is treated as removed: permit required, $150 per DBH inch without one, and the contractor is jointly liable with the property owner. This applies inside Pinellas Park city limits.
Pinellas Park’s own code. Land Development Code Chapter 18, Article 4 (§§ 18-401–18-421), note this is a different Municode product from the City’s Code of Ordinances. On a platted lot under an acre with a Certificate of Occupancy in effect, § 18-403(A) sets the trigger at a trunk diameter of four and one-half inches or more at DBH, or native understory. That half-inch is unique to Pinellas Park in this county. Pinellas Park permit detail.
We cut to ANSI A300 standards with an ISA Certified Arborist on staff, which is why we can write a spec that stands up if anyone ever asks what was done and why.
Book it
Happy’s has been family owned and operated, working this county, since 1989. Free estimate: (727) 365-1803.
Frequently asked questions
Can you thin out my pine so the wind blows through it? No, and anyone who offers to should be shown the gate. Thinning a pine’s interior and leaving foliage only at the branch tips ("lion-tailing") increases end weight and leverage, which is the opposite of what you want. Pines shed wind best with their crowns intact.
My pine looks fine but it has a long split down one side of the trunk. What is that? Very possibly a lightning strike track. Tampa Bay leads the country for strikes, and a tall lone pine is a natural target. Some struck trees survive; some decline over a season or two as the cambium damage takes effect. It is worth an arborist assessment either way.
Is any of this trimming permitted work in Pinellas Park? Routine maintenance pruning, no. Severe pruning is another matter: the county’s Article XIX counts topping and heavy defoliation as "effectively removing" the tree, which brings the permit requirement and the $150-per-inch penalty into play.
Do you do the trees along my back fence where the ditch is? Usually yes, but easement trees can have a different owner and a different authority than the ones in your yard. We check the easement status before scheduling.
Google reviews
Rated 4.9 by 462 of your neighbors.
Reviews · Tree Trimming & Pruning in Pinellas Park, FL
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 →
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