A Publix parking lot never really sits still. This tree trimming job put our crew at a Publix in Casselberry, over in Seminole County right along the US 17-92 corridor, where a big shade tree at the edge of the lot had thrown a heavy limb out over the building and the parking spaces below. Central Florida growing seasons are long, and a laurel oak left to its own devices will reach for the open sky above a lot a little more every year. Then the summer storms roll through most afternoons and load that same limb with wind and rain. The overhang in the before photo had gotten close enough to the roofline and the cars that it stopped being a looks problem and turned into a liability one. Low limbs over a busy grocery entrance catch box trucks, scrape the roof edge, and drop leaves and deadwood on whoever parks underneath. A branch hanging into a fire lane is also the kind of thing a property manager gets a note about. We came in to pull that reach back to a safe, clean clearance without topping the tree or leaving it lopsided. At Roeling Green Lawns, a lot of our tree trimming is exactly this: commercial trees that outgrew their space and need bringing back on a property that cannot close for the day.
Reaching the overhang meant getting up over the lot without putting a boot on the roof or blocking the drive lane. We tied in and worked the limb from above, taking it back in stages instead of one heavy drop. The saw stayed off the roof the whole time. Every cut came off at the branch collar, back to a lateral that could take over, so the tree keeps a natural shape and seals its wounds the way it is supposed to. We did not top it. Topping a shade tree buys you a flush of weak, fast growth and a bigger problem in two years, so we pruned for real clearance and left the canopy balanced side to side. Because a grocery store runs all day, we staged the work to keep the entrance, the fire lane, and the cart returns open the whole time, roping and lowering the bigger pieces into a clear drop zone while a ground crew fed the smaller brush straight into the chipper. It is the same careful approach we brought when we trimmed the palms at a Melbourne Publix overnight, scaled to fit this site and this tree.
The after shots tell the rest of it. From the ground the tree reads as balanced again, and from underneath you can see real sky between the canopy and the cars. The roofline is clear. The parking spaces are usable. Nothing is left hanging where a tall SUV or a delivery truck will catch it on the way through. Before we packed up, we walked the rest of the trees on the property and pulled out the obvious deadwood so nothing was waiting to drop on the next windy day. We hauled off every limb and raked the lot clean, so the property manager did not inherit a pile of brush by the cart corral. Commercial tree trimming like this is something we schedule on a regular cycle, usually once or twice a year, for shopping centers, HOAs, and office parks around Seminole County, because trees that get checked and pruned on a schedule almost never turn into the emergency that closes a lane during business hours. If you manage a property in Casselberry or anywhere in Central Florida and your trees have grown past their space, we can put together a commercial tree service plan and work around your hours. Take a look at the rest of our completed projects to see more of this kind of work.
