Tree Trimming in Virden

Virden is a historic small city in Macoupin County, about 30 miles southwest of Springfield, known for its late 19th century coal mining history and the Virden Massacre of 1898. The older parts of town have large, very mature trees planted alongside homes and commercial buildings from that era. The community has a proud local identity and a stable older housing stock. Tree work in Virden frequently involves very large, old trees on historic properties.

Overgrown or dead branches drop fast during the ice storms that hit central Illinois every winter. Springfield sits in a wide-open prairie with no natural windbreak, so trees here take the full force of those storms. A lot of the older neighborhoods like Iles Park and Laurel Hills have silver maples and cottonwoods that were planted in the 1960s and are now pushing 60 feet tall — those limbs get heavy, and heavy limbs fall.

We look at the tree in person before we quote anything, because a photo doesn't show a hollow trunk or a root system heaving up against a foundation. We cut to the branch collar — that's the slight ridge where the branch meets the trunk — so the tree seals itself over instead of rotting from an open wound left by a flush cut.