Tree Care for Commercial, Association and Municipal Property
Apex Landscaping has cared for trees across Chicagoland since 1991 and has planted more than 50,000 of them. Our team includes ISA-Certified Arborists, and we are licensed and insured.
Most of our tree work is on commercial, association and municipal property, where a tree is an asset and a liability question at the same time. A mature canopy raises property value and takes decades to replace. That same canopy over a parking area, a sidewalk or a playground is something the owner is responsible for.
We handle pruning, tree risk assessment, removal, storm response, and planting and replacement planning, either on their own or as part of a full commercial grounds program.
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Preventative Maintenance:
Our team helps you keep your trees and landscaping healthy with preventative maintenance.
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Emergency Tree Care:
If your tree has become heavily damaged or has another emergency, call our team to help.
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Drought Services:
We help you keep your yard well maintained and as healthy as can be despite any droughts.
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Storm Damage Care:
Storms can heavily damage your landscaping, so be sure to call us to get your yard back in shape.
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Fertilization:
Keep your yard healthy and green with regular fertilization services from our licensed team.
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Soil Management:
If your soil washes away, our team is the one to call. We’ll take care of conservation and soil health.
ISA-Certified Arborists on Staff
Certification matters more in tree work than in most trades, because bad work does damage that is slow and permanent. A tree that has been topped or over thinned does not recover. It responds with weak, fast regrowth that fails years later, usually in a storm, usually over something expensive.
ISA certification means an arborist has been tested on tree biology, pruning standards, hazard assessment and safe work practice, and has to keep the credential current through continuing education. It is the difference between someone who cuts trees and someone who is accountable for what the tree does afterward.
Apex is licensed and insured, and certificates of insurance are provided for association and municipal work.
When Pruning Is the Answer, and When Removal Is
Pruning is the answer far more often than removal, and the reason for pruning changes what actually gets cut.
Clearance pruning lifts the canopy off walks, drives, parking areas and sight lines at intersections. Structural pruning corrects form on young and middle aged trees, and it is the cheapest tree work anyone ever buys, because it prevents a failure rather than cleaning one up. Deadwood and hazard pruning takes out what has already failed inside the canopy before it comes down on its own.
Removal is the right call when a tree is dead, structurally compromised, in a decline it will not come out of, or growing somewhere it can never be made safe. On managed property the honest test is not whether the tree can be saved, it is whether it can be made acceptably safe for whatever sits underneath it.
We do not top trees. Topping is not a pruning method, and a provider who offers it as one has told you something useful about their standards.
Tree Risk Assessment on Managed Property
A tree risk assessment answers one specific question: how likely is it that this tree, or a part of it, fails and hits something that matters. It is not a general opinion about whether a tree looks healthy.
The assessment reads species and age, structural defects, decay and cavities, root condition, and any recent change around the base such as trenching, regrading or new paving. Then it reads the target: what sits under the canopy, and how often people are actually there. A declining tree over a maintenance yard and the same tree over a playground are not the same problem and do not get the same answer.
For boards and public works departments this is also a documentation question. A written assessment that was acted on puts an owner in a very different position after a failure than no record at all.
Storm Response
Chicagoland storms do not take down one tree, they take down clusters, and every property in the area calls the same week. What decides how that week goes is order of operations.
Clear what blocks access and egress first, because a property nobody can enter is a bigger problem than a broken tree. Then make safe what is hanging, split or partially failed, since that is what injures somebody two days after the storm. Cleanup and the longer decisions about what has to come out follow, and they should not be made in the first forty eight hours.
Knowing in advance who to call, and having a crew that already knows the property, is most of what makes that week manageable.
Planting and Replacement Planning
Apex has planted more than 50,000 trees across Chicagoland. On managed property the useful conversation is rarely about one tree, it is about what the canopy looks like in ten and twenty years.
Most commercial and association properties were planted all at once, which means they also age all at once. A site that installed forty of the same species in the same season will lose them in the same decade, and to the same pest or disease. Staggering replacements and diversifying species is unglamorous work that quietly prevents a very expensive year.
We plan replacements against the property rather than the invoice: what is declining now, what will need to come out inside five years, and what should go in this season so there is something established by the time it does. Ongoing health work is covered on our plant health care page.
A Highly Recommended Service
“I highly recommend Apex Landscaping, Inc. for all landscaping and gardening needs. From my initial e-mail requesting information and potential service, to the final billing, Apex personnel were knowledgeable, helpful, courteous, and professional. I have used Apex before, and I know that no job is too big or to small and no matter the size of the job, each is handled the same: professionally. The products and plants in my experience have all been of exceptional quality. I highly recommend Apex Landscaping for any gardening need.”
— May 2020, Barbara M.