Tree Removal in Buffalo Grove, IL

Buffalo Grove’s permit guide lists what does not need a permit, and tree removal is on that list — alongside gutters, siding, soffit and fascia. For a village this organized about its urban forest, that surprises people. It means tree removal Buffalo Grove homeowners want on their own ground can happen when you decide it should, not when a village calendar allows it.

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Six Thousand Ash Trees Came Out Of This Village

Buffalo Grove went after the emerald ash borer harder than most of its neighbors. The village put out bids to remove 6,183 ash trees between 2013 and 2015, planted 700 replacements across fall 2012 and spring 2013 at a cost of up to $165,000, and locked in 3,300 parkway trees at $170 each — $561,000 — for 2015 and 2016. At the time the village manager noted trees in the north part of the village were showing signs of distress.

That program covered parkway trees. It did not cover yours. A decade on, the ash still standing in Buffalo Grove backyards are the ones nobody was contractually obliged to look at — and by now they are either treated, dead, or quietly failing. Dead ash goes brittle fast, and brittle is the condition that turns a routine takedown into a rigging job. University of Illinois Extension publishes the signs of borer infestation if you want to check yours first.

Registration In Buffalo Grove

Buffalo Grove charges a $75 annual contractor registration fee, run on a calendar-year basis, with state-licensed trades submitting license copies instead. Contact for permits is Fifty Raupp Boulevard, 847-459-2530. The village has been recognized as a Tree City USA and its public works director has said urban forestry has been a priority here for twenty-nine years.

Two Counties, Two Townships, One Creek

Buffalo Grove is the rare village that sits in both Cook and Lake counties — Wheeling Township on the Cook side, Vernon Township on the Lake side — across 9.58 square miles at an elevation of 682 feet. Lake Cook Road divides it. Buffalo Creek runs through, and the name is the English translation of the Potawatomi name for that creek. The village sits in the Des Plaines River watershed on what was tallgrass prairie dotted with small wetlands, and the golf course doubles as floodplain.

Housing went up in waves: single-family homes after the Korean War, with Al Frank’s company building thousand-square-foot houses for veterans, then an eighty percent population surge through the 1970s — the third-highest growth rate in the northwest suburbs. Named subdivisions include the Highlands, Green Knolls, Windfield, Arbors, Cambridge on the Lake, Chatham Place, Country Court, Crossings, Fireside Terrace, Villa Verde and Woodland Commons.

Seventies subdivisions mean seventies plantings. Fifty years on, those trees are at full size on lots that were designed around them when they were saplings — over roofs, into service drops, and up against the house. A good share of the tree removal Buffalo Grove asks for now is exactly that: full-grown stock on lots laid out for saplings.

Tree Removal In Buffalo Grove: What We Do

• Removal of dead and declining ash the village program never reached
• Trimming to pull weight off over-extended limbs on mature subdivision stock
• Stump grinding, deeper where you plan to replant
• Clearing along creek edges and rear property lines
• Storm response, day or night

Get A Tree Removal Buffalo Grove Quote

Tell us the address and what the tree is doing. If it is an ash, say so — that changes how we plan the takedown, and it changes the price for good reasons we will explain.

708-424-5885 · Cook County service area · nearby: Wheeling, Northbrook.