Tree Removal in Highland, Indiana
Pro Tree Service has worked across Lake County since 1989. Highland is a town that takes its trees more seriously than most of its neighbours, and that changes what a homeowner here needs to know before hiring anyone. The town runs a Tree Board, adopted an Urban Forest Management Plan with a thirty-two year horizon, and inventoried its public trees rather than guessing at them. If you are arranging tree removal in Highland, the first question is not what it costs — it is whose tree it is.
Whose Tree Is It? Highland Counted Them
A community tree inventory completed in 2017 found the Town of Highland manages 8,955 trees along its street parkways, parks, schools and municipal campuses, with another 1,056 growing on the banks of town drainage waterways that the town does not manage but that still make up part of the canopy. The inventory also identified more than 4,200 empty planting sites along parkways. That work produced the Urban Forest Management Plan adopted by Town Council Resolution 2017-37 in November 2017, effective March 2018.
The practical consequence is that a large share of the trees people call us about in Highland are town trees, not theirs. Before you pay for a removal, it is worth establishing which side of the property line the trunk sits on.
| Where the trunk is | Who is responsible |
|---|---|
| Parkway, park, or town property | The Town of Highland. Work on town trees goes through the town, not through you. |
| Your yard, front or back | You. Indiana has no statewide tree removal permit, and Highland does not require one for a private tree. |
| Straddling a boundary with a neighbour | Under Indiana law, ownership follows the trunk. Whichever lot the trunk stands on owns the tree and its upkeep. |
| Being cleared for construction | Development landscaping rules apply, including a protection zone extending ten feet beyond the drip line of any tree being preserved. |
Call the town before you pay anyone to take down a parkway tree. We would rather tell you a tree is the town’s problem than sell you a removal you did not owe.
The 1950s Canopy Is Reaching the End Together
Highland built out fast after the war, and the street trees went in fast with it — a lot of silver maple, planted the same few years, on the same streets. Those trees are now sixty-five to seventy years old, which is late middle age for a fast-growing maple in a parkway. They fail in a recognizable pattern: included bark in the main crotch, a seam running down the trunk, then a co-dominant stem tearing out in a summer storm and taking a gutter or a windshield with it.
This is the most common thing we look at in Highland, and it is usually fixable without a removal. A large maple with a split crotch can often be reduced and cabled rather than taken down. Getting to it before the seam opens is what makes the difference, and it is far cheaper than the alternative.
Dead Ash Is Still Coming Out
Emerald ash borer reached every county in Indiana, and Lake County lost its untreated ash years ago. The trees still standing are the danger. Ash killed by borer dries brittle, and it gives none of the warning a live tree gives you when a limb is about to go. Purdue Extension advises homeowners not to take dead ash down themselves, and we would say the same more strongly — a dry ash is the single most dangerous residential removal we do.
If you are looking at a grey trunk with the bark falling away in plates and woodpecker holes across the upper stem, treatment is no longer an option. You can see how far along it is by checking the Indiana DNR’s emerald ash borer resources.
NIPSCO Lines and What They Are Allowed to Do
Highland sits in NIPSCO territory, and utility trimming is governed statewide by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission rather than by the utility’s own preference. Two rules are worth knowing. The utility must give you at least two weeks notice before trimming near your property. And it may not remove more than twenty-five percent of your tree, or top it, without your permission, unless there is an emergency or service cannot otherwise be kept safe and reliable.
If a limb is actually touching a service line, that is the utility’s call and not ours — stay away from it and phone them. Everything short of the line is ours to work on, and we will tell you which is which when we look at it.
Tree Services We Provide in Highland
- Tree and bush removal, including sectional rigging where there is no room to fell
- Tree trimming and pruning to ANSI A300 standards — no topping, ever
- Cabling and bracing for split-crotch maples worth saving
- Canopy elevation and canopy thinning
- Stump grinding, four to eight inches below grade, deeper if you plan to replant
- Dead and hazardous ash removal
- Emergency storm response, seven days a week
Where We Work in Highland
We cover all of Highland, from the Wicker Park neighbourhoods and the Ridge Road corridor through the older streets north of the Little Calumet and the subdivisions on the south side. We also work the neighbouring communities of Griffith, Munster and Schererville, and the rest of Lake County.
Get a Free Estimate
Tell us the address and what you are looking at. An ISA Certified Arborist comes out, looks at the tree, and gives you a written price — free, no obligation, any day of the week. If the tree can be saved rather than removed, we will say so. If it belongs to the town, we will tell you that too.
Call 708-424-5885 or request an estimate online. For a tree on a house or a vehicle, call rather than filling in a form.
Source and Public Record
Highland’s tree provisions sit in the Town of Highland Municipal Code — the Tree Board and tree care provisions under Title 8, Streets, Sidewalks and Public Ways, and the landscaping and tree preservation requirements for development under Title 18, Zoning. The tree inventory figures and the Urban Forest Management Plan come from Town Council Resolution 2017-37.
The full Municipal Code is published for public review at ecode360.com/HI4808. We encourage anyone who wants to verify anything stated on this page to read the code directly rather than take our summary for it.
The Town of Highland holds the official version of its code and is the authority for any ordinance passed since the most recent codification. The Town can be reached through highland.in.gov. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and requirements can change.