Jason Lewis has been climbing and cutting trees in south Grand Rapids for more than a decade. Diversified Tree Company LLC is his crew — owner-operated, family-focused, Black-owned, working out of a yard on Paris Avenue SE with between them. Pruning is the quiet half of the job. It's the work that keeps a century maple standing instead of coming down in pieces after the next storm.
Precision cuts that keep a valuable tree valuable
Good pruning is subtraction done carefully. We're looking at where a limb attaches, how the canopy carries weight, and what's underneath it — your roof, your service drop, your driveway. Every cut is made to a point the tree can actually seal over, which is the difference between a wound that closes and one that sits open and rots for years.
Most of the tree pruning we're called out for falls into a few buckets:
- Storm-risk reduction — removing the heavy, over-extended and dead limbs that fail first
- Canopy health: deadwood out, crossing and rubbing branches resolved, airflow improved
- Clearance over driveways, sidewalks and play areas so nothing catches a truck or a head
- Young-tree structural pruning, so a good tree grows into a good shape instead of a problem
Late winter is the window in Michigan
For most species here, February and March are the best time to prune. The leaves are off, so we can read the structure clearly, the ground is often firm enough to keep equipment off your lawn, and the tree wakes up in spring already sealing its cuts. Oaks are stricter — those only get pruned in dormancy, because cutting an oak in the growing season invites oak wilt, and oak wilt takes the tree and sometimes its neighbors.
That doesn't mean you wait until February if a limb is hanging over the kids' bedroom. Hazard work happens whenever it needs to happen. Timing is for elective, health-and-shape pruning — and if you call us in June about an oak, we'll tell you straight and put you on the calendar for winter.
Glad I waited for the right professional. Jason was very careful in his approach with my fallen after the storm. If not for him I would have definitely damaged my roof. Very happy.
We won't top your tree — here's what we do instead
Ask us to top a tree and the answer is no. Topping — cutting the leaders back to stubs — forces a flush of weakly attached regrowth that snaps out in the first real wind, and it shortens the life of the tree while making it more dangerous, not less. If a tree is genuinely too big for its spot, we'll say so honestly and talk about reduction where it's possible or removal where it isn't.
When the problem is a split-prone union rather than size, bracing and cabling is often the better answer: a structural support system that lets you keep a tree worth keeping. No honest arborist guarantees a tree will never fail. What cabling does is dramatically reduce the risk of that union coming apart.
Fourteen towns from one yard on Paris Avenue
We prune in Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Grandville, Byron Center, Caledonia, Moline, Jenison, Hudsonville, Dorr, Ada, Wayland, Alto, Marne and Comstock Park — residential and commercial. From the Paris Ave SE yard, most of the metro is about 20 minutes away in normal conditions, and estimate requests get a response within one business day.
We're a BBB accredited business rated 5 out of 5 from 13 reviewsand estimates are free. Brush is chipped and hauled; if you want the wood, we'll buck the trunk to firewood length and stack it where you point at no extra charge.
Ready to get a plan for your trees? Call Jason at (616) 407-0044 or email thegreatestwoodchucker@gmail.com and we'll come look at what you've got.