Tree Service in Lexington, MA: Pruning, Removal, Stumps & Storm Care

Tree service in Lexington, MA covers everything from $200 deadwood pruning to $3,000 crane-assisted removal — plus stump grinding, storm-damage response, and Tree Bylaw permit filing. About half the time a Lexington homeowner calls us convinced a tree is on its last legs, the tree is fine and a $400 prune covers it. The other half it really is coming down — sometimes with our help, sometimes on its own schedule. The job is figuring out which is which before anyone writes a $1,500 cheque. I'm Keith McDonald. We have been the tree service for a lot of Lexington households since 1995, out of our Billerica yard, and the truck still finds its way to most of these driveways without GPS.

What "Tree Service" Means in Lexington

"Tree service" is a catch-all. In Lexington it covers six work types, all of which we do in-house with our own crew and our own equipment:

• Tree removal — taking the whole tree down, usually $500 to $3,000 depending on size, access, and Tree Bylaw status. Full breakdown in our tree removal in Lexington guide.
• Tree pruning and trimming — selective branch removal for health, structure, or clearance. $200 to $1,500 per tree.
• Stump grinding — turning a leftover stump into mulch 6 to 12 inches below grade. $150 to $300 per stump standalone, less if combined with removal.
• Emergency / storm response — same-day or overnight work when something has fallen or is about to. Covered separately in our Lexington emergency guide.
• Tree health assessments — a walk-through with an ISA-trained arborist when something looks off but you cannot tell what. Often free if it leads to scheduled work.
• Cabling, bracing, and lightning protection — preservation work on the heritage oaks and maples that Lexington homeowners actually want to keep.

We also handle the Lexington Tree Bylaw paperwork on every job that needs it — Tree Warden permit, Conservation Commission Notice of Intent for wetland buffers, Historical Commission coordination near Battle Green. That is part of "tree service" here in a way it is not in most other towns.

What It Costs in 2026

Service	Lexington Cost Range	Notes
Small tree removal (under 30 ft)	$350 – $550	Ornamental cherry, crabapple, small birch
Medium tree removal (30 – 60 ft)	$550 – $1,200	Most residential jobs; mature maple or ash
Large tree removal (60 – 80 ft)	$1,200 – $2,500	Red oak, sugar maple, white pine in tight lots
Crane-assisted removal	$2,500 – $5,000+	Dead trees, zero drop zone, 80+ ft heritage trees
Pruning — small tree	$200 – $400	Deadwood removal, one ornamental
Pruning — large tree	$800 – $1,500	Mature oak or maple, full crown work
Stump grinding — per stump	$150 – $300	Less per stump on multi-stump jobs
Emergency response	$500 – $5,000+	24/7; depends on tree and what it hit
Tree Bylaw permit filing	$20/inch DBH	Plus $200/inch mitigation if applicable

Every number above is a real range from work we have done in Lexington and the bordering towns. We quote flat and in writing after a site visit. No "starting at."

Pruning Done Right (and Done Wrong)

Pruning is giving the tree a haircut. Done well, it looks better and it doesn't tip. Done badly, it grows back wrong and the tree spends the next ten years sulking about it. A few hundred dollars in proper pruning prevents thousands in emergency removal down the road; pruning done wrong does more damage than not pruning at all. Topping — cutting the main leader or large branches to stubs — triggers weak regrowth, opens disease entry points, and can shorten a tree's life by decades. (If you have ever seen a maple that looks like it got an electric shock at the top, that is a topping job. The neighbour did not pay extra for that look.) We follow ISA pruning standards on every cut: at the branch collar, no flush cuts, no leaving stubs.

The kinds of pruning we do most in Lexington:

• Crown thinning ($400 – $1,000): selective removal to let light and air through. Standard on a 60-year-old oak whose canopy has gotten dense.
• Crown reduction ($600 – $1,200): shrinking the overall canopy size when a tree has gotten too big for the lot. Common on the maples lining Massachusetts Avenue.
• Deadwood removal ($200 – $500): clearing dead branches that are about to drop. The most important safety prune.
• Clearance pruning ($300 – $600): lifting branches off the roofline, the driveway, or away from utility wires.
• Structural pruning of young trees ($150 – $300): training a 10-year-old tree so it grows into the right shape. Cheap now, irreplaceable later.

Late winter is the best window for most pruning in Lexington — January through March, while the trees are dormant and you can see the structure clearly. Oaks specifically should only be pruned during dormancy because of oak wilt risk during the growing season. Storm-damaged or hazardous limbs come off any time of year.

Stump Grinding — Why It's Not Optional

A leftover stump is Hollywood-grade demolition for something six inches tall. It rots, it harbours fungi that can spread to nearby trees, and the surface roots get worse every year. Grinding takes 30 to 90 minutes per stump and turns the whole thing into mulch six to twelve inches below grade. After that, you can lay sod, plant a garden, or pour a patio on top — the stump is no longer the boss of that square of yard.

If we are already on-site for a removal, grinding the stump same-visit drops the cost significantly because the equipment is already there. Doing it as a separate trip means full mobilization. Bundle when you can.

Premium-Property Standards

This part matters more in Lexington than in most of our towns. The homes on Follen Hill, Meriam Hill, and the streets off Massachusetts Avenue have stone walls, brick walks, mature beds, irrigation lines, and old septic systems — none of which take kindly to a 40,000-pound chip truck. So we work around them:

• Plywood paths under wheels and outriggers on lawns
• Trunk wraps on adjacent trees before rigging
• Smaller equipment when the access calls for it
• No parking on irrigation lines or unflagged septic
• Crew briefed on the property's specifics before they touch a saw
• Site left raked and cleaner than we found it

That is the baseline. I have been climbing trees for thirty years and I still ask the homeowner where the property line is before we start rigging, because the wrong answer to that question costs me a fence. The list above is just what working on a Lexington property looks like.

Bundling Services to Save the Mobilization Cost

Half the cost of a single small job is mobilization — getting the crew, the truck, the chipper, and the climbing gear to your address. Once we are on your property, the marginal cost of doing the second job drops sharply. A small pruning is $300 standalone; the same pruning bundled with a removal is often $150. Three stumps in one visit costs noticeably less than three stumps in three visits.

If you have been putting off three or four small tree tasks, schedule them as one visit. You will spend less and get more done in a single afternoon than you would over three separate calls.

When You Should Not Hire Us (or Anyone)

I tell people this on almost every walkthrough. There are three situations where the right answer is no tree service at all:

• The tree is healthy and not threatening anything. Leave it alone. A mature tree adds 10 to 15% to your property value. Removing one because you might not like the leaves is a bad trade.
• The job is genuinely a Saturday task. Trimming low branches with a hand saw, cutting up a small fallen limb, raking the leaf pile — those are weekend chores. Save the overhead chainsaw work for a crew with insurance.
• You are pricing on quote count alone. If you are going to call three arborists and pick whichever number is lowest, we will lose that bid to the uninsured guy with a magnetic truck sign every time. You want one local arborist you trust who knows the bylaw and shows up. That is a relationship, not a price war.

The Lexington Bylaw — Quick Version

Lexington has one of the strictest residential tree bylaws in Massachusetts. The full breakdown is in our Lexington Tree Bylaw guide, but the short version: routine pruning and removal on private property without construction usually triggers nothing. Removal of a tree 8 inches DBH or larger in the setback zones during major construction triggers a Tree Warden permit and mitigation — $200 per inch of trunk diameter, or 4x that for any tree 24 inches or larger. Hazardous trees are exempt from the mitigation fee.

Public shade trees in the town right-of-way always need Tree Warden approval and a public hearing. We file every kind of permit Lexington has on our regular schedule — the town's Tree Committee knows us by name.

Why Local Matters Here

After every nor'easter, out-of-state crews descend on Massachusetts looking for storm work. They are called storm chasers. Their insurance often does not cover Massachusetts work, their pricing is invented on the spot, and when something goes wrong they are 500 miles away. (If a guy with a magnetic truck sign and a Pennsylvania plate knocks on your door at 7am the day after a storm offering you a "discount," he is not your local arborist. Your local arborist is already on the next street, on a tree that called yesterday.) A company that lives 20 minutes from your driveway, knows the Tree Warden by name, and answers the phone at 2am is the entire reason to hire local in this town.

For Lexington specifically, "local" also means knowing the bylaw cold. The wrong contractor can cost a homeowner four-figure mitigation fees by removing a setback tree without checking. We check before we cut.

Service Area

We work across 18 Middlesex County and Merrimack Valley towns from our Billerica base. Lexington is 20 minutes; we also work regularly in Bedford, Burlington, Winchester, Waltham, Woburn, and Concord. For service-pinpoint pages, see tree removal in Lexington, tree pruning in Lexington, stump grinding in Lexington, or storm damage cleanup in Lexington.

Get a Free Quote

Call (978) 375-2272. I answer the phone, I do the site visit, and I am on every Lexington job. Flat written quote, permits filed, show up when we said we would. That has been the model since 1995 — the trucks have changed, the radio still only catches one AM station, the model has not.