Tree Care
Professional Tree Pruning
How Pruning Improves Health, Safety & Appearance Pruning is the tree service homeowners request most often, and the gap between good and bad work is wider than with any other.
August 18, 2026 No Comments
A standard home inspection in Ontario doesn't cover trees. Inspectors look at the roof, the well, the electrical panel and the age of the furnace, and most inspection agreements exclude vegetation outright. On a suburban lot the omission has little consequence.
On ten acres of mixed bush, the trees account for a significant share of the property's risk and upkeep. New rural owners frequently take possession without knowing the condition of their trees, which cutting is permitted, or which trees represent a future cost.
In this article, we'll cover the work that should be done, roughly in the order it should be done.
Arborists judge tree risk by looking at what’s wrong with the tree alongside what would be hit if it or one of its limbs came down. A dead maple standing in the middle of twenty acres of bush is wildlife habitat, while the same dead maple fifteen feet from the propane tank is a liability.
Most rural properties carry far more damaged trees than structures worth protecting, so the list of trees needing attention is usually short.
Walk the property and concentrate on the trees close enough to reach the house, garage, driveway, well head, septic components, outbuildings, parking area or the hydro line running in from the road, watching for the warning signs of a dangerous tree:
Late fall through early spring is the best time for this, because bare branches expose dead wood and structural problems that a summer canopy hides. Photograph anything you find, with something in the frame for scale, and keep the photos for when you request quotes.
Emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle from Asia, first confirmed in Ontario near Windsor in 2002.
The adults are metallic blue-green and rarely seen, but it’s the larvae that cause the damage. They hatch under the bark and tunnel through the tissue that carries water and sugars along the trunk until the tree starves. Adults emerge the following spring through small D-shaped holes in the bark, usually between mid-May and late June.
Above ground the symptoms are a thinning crown, dying upper branches and yellowing leaves, all of which appear long after the damage is underway.
Almost no infested ash survives without treatment, and the beetle attacks healthy trees as readily as weakened ones. Across Simcoe County and the Kawarthas the majority of ash mortality has already occurred, and many rural lots now carry dead and dying ash that has been deteriorating for years.
Dead ash are dangerous to remove. The wood dries out and turns brittle, so it doesn’t respond to cuts the way sound wood does. Limbs snap off well out from the trunk rather than close to it, dropping pieces early and from unexpected places.
Ash wood should be burned on the property where it was cut. Moving untreated ash firewood spreads the beetle far beyond the few kilometres it travels on its own, which is why the Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulates its transport.
Arborists consider ash the least predictable species to work on, and removal is a job for a qualified crew, especially near a building, a vehicle or a hydro line.
Most new owners want to open up the property in the first season by clearing the fencerow, taking out the scrub along the driveway and getting more light onto the house. In most cases, holding off on the bulk of that work for a full year produces a better result.
One reason is seasonal. Brush that looks like neglect in April is often working as a snow fence in January, and the difference isn’t apparent until the property has been through a full year.
The more important reason is structural.
Trees that grow up inside a stand develop tall narrow crowns and fairly limited root systems, because the trees around them take most of the wind. When the outside edge is removed, the trees behind it carry wind loads they never grew to handle. Windbreaks cleared in spring commonly lose several of the remaining trees by the following winter.
Selective removal produces better results on almost every rural property, and leaving the remainder until the site has been observed through a full season avoids most of these losses.
Tree cutting on rural property is regulated across most of this area, regardless of who owns the land.
In the Simcoe County townships, including Oro-Medonte, Ramara, Severn and Springwater, the County’s Forest Conservation Bylaw applies to woodlands on any property of one hectare (2.47 acres) or more. A treed area counts as woodland once it holds a set number of trees per hectare. An area holding 250 trees per hectare with trunks more than 20 centimetres across qualifies, as does one holding 500 trees per hectare with trunks more than 12 centimetres.
Several exemptions cover ordinary homeowner work. You can cut for your own use as long as enough trees remain for the area to still count as woodland. If you hold a building permit, you can clear within 25 metres of the structure. Clearing to install utilities, or to build a driveway to a permitted building, is also exempt.
Clearing beyond those exemptions requires a permit from the County.
A first conviction for cutting without one carries a fine of up to $10,000, or $1,000 per tree to a maximum of ten trees, whichever is greater, and the court can order replanting. Orillia and Barrie set their own tree rules independently of the County, so the County bylaw doesn’t apply inside their limits, and Kawartha Lakes has its own regulations.
Work near a wetland, shoreline or floodplain falls under the local conservation authority as well, and its approval is required separately from anything the municipal bylaw permits. Woodland within 30.5 metres of the water’s edge of a lake, river or stream is also classified as a Sensitive Natural Area under the County bylaw and carries stricter requirements.
Which rules govern a given property depends on the municipality it sits in and on how close the work is to water.
Most rural properties are served by a septic system, and tree roots are one of the more common causes of failure in the leaching bed.
A leaching bed covers a large area, commonly a thousand square feet or more, with perforated pipe buried fairly shallow. The soil around it stays damp and full of nutrients, conditions that attract roots, and once roots find one of the holes in the pipe they grow into it until the flow is restricted.
The species most often responsible are willow, silver maple, red maple, poplar, elm and birch.
General guidance is to keep a tree at least as far from the bed as it will eventually be tall, which means a minimum of about twenty feet for small species and fifty feet or more for large ones. Roots usually spread two to three times wider than the branches above them, so a tree that appears to be a safe distance away often isn’t.
Equipment causes the other common problem.
A bucket truck, chipper or stump grinder crossing a leaching bed can compact or crush it, so the location of the tank and bed should be identified and passed to the contractor before work starts. A competent crew will plan an access route around them, and access routing is a reasonable question to ask when collecting quotes.
Hydro One maintains vegetation along road allowances and around its primary distribution lines.
The service line running from the road onto the property and into the house is usually privately owned, which makes clearing vegetation around it the owner’s responsibility. Rural service runs are often long and pass through bush, so branches resting on the wire are common and the cost of clearing them falls to the homeowner.
Hydro One will disconnect and reconnect a private service line free of charge once a year so the work can be done safely. Nobody should prune near a live wire, and only qualified crews should work within three metres of an overhead line under any conditions.
Properties with substantial forest cover may qualify for a reduced property tax rate under the provincial Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program. Enrolled forest land is classified as managed forest and taxed at 25 per cent of the municipal residential rate.
To qualify, a property needs at least 4 hectares (9.88 acres) of eligible forest on a single municipal roll number, along with a Managed Forest Plan prepared or approved by a certified Managed Forest Plan Approver.
Houses and landscaped areas don’t count toward the total, though the bush behind them often does.
A previous owner’s plan doesn’t carry over, so if the property you purchased was already enrolled, you have 90 days from the date of transfer to submit your own application and plan. If that deadline passes, the land comes out of the program for the following taxation year. For new enrolments, the annual deadline to add land for the next tax year is June 30.
Any existing plan should be requested from the seller. Even where the new owner decides not to enrol, it usually contains a full inventory of the forest on the property.
The first year is normally limited to urgent work, meaning hazards near buildings and access routes, plus the condition of any ash on the property. After that, most rural properties settle into a routine built around the jobs booked ahead of each winter:
Tree work on acreage is a recurring property expense closer to the septic pump-out than to a one-time cleanup, and properties inspected on a schedule cost less to maintain than properties left until something fails.
If you’ve recently taken possession of a property in Orillia, Oro-Medonte, Ramara, Severn, Springwater or Kawartha Lakes and want an ISA-certified arborist to assess it before you make decisions, we can help.
Contact us today for your free, no-obligation estimate, or with any questions you have about your specific scenario.
How Pruning Improves Health, Safety & Appearance Pruning is the tree service homeowners request most often, and the gap between good and bad work is wider than with any other.
Tree Care for New Rural Property Owners A standard home inspection in Ontario doesn’t cover trees. Inspectors look at the roof, the well, the electrical panel and the age of
The Hidden Risks of Dead Trees Most property owners don’t give a dead tree much thought until it’s lying across the driveway. On rural acreage or a cottage lot, a