Ash Tree Removal in Franklin, TN

How do you know the tree is an ash?

Start with the twigs. Ash buds and leaves grow in opposite pairs, and each leaf is really a stalk carrying several leaflets rather than a single blade. On an older trunk the bark forms a tight net of interlacing ridges, a diamond pattern. Maples also branch in opposite pairs, but their leaves are single and lobed; hickories and walnuts carry compound leaves, but alternate along the twig. When opposite pairs, compound leaves and diamond bark all show up on one tree, it is almost certainly an ash.

When did the emerald ash borer reach Williamson County?

In 2015. That year the U.S. Department of Agriculture added Williamson County to its emerald ash borer regulated area after the beetle was detected in the county, as recorded in a notice from its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Subdivisions such as Westhaven, Fieldstone Farms and McKay’s Mill were laid out among trees that were already old, ash included.

For removal, the borer matters because of what it leaves in the yard: an ash killed by it stays upright, dead, and turns more brittle while it waits. That standing dead ash is what most Franklin ash requests are about.

Signs an ash in the yard is dead or dying

• A bare crown in summer. The trees next door are in full leaf and the ash is not, or only its lowest limbs carry any green.
• Bark coming away. Patches of bark split, loosen, or drop off the trunk, leaving pale wood exposed.
• Sprouts low on the tree. A thicket of leafy shoots along the trunk or around its base while the top stays bare.
• Limbs on the lawn. Dead branches falling after ordinary winds that left every other tree on the street alone.

One of these is reason enough to have the tree seen. Two or more usually point to removal.

Why a dead ash should come down sooner

A dead ash keeps losing wood, twigs and small branches at first and heavier limbs later, and a winter glaze of ice can bring that brittle wood down with little notice. The brittleness also changes the job: a climber has to be far more careful about what the tree can bear, where rigging can be anchored, and which limbs will take a rope at all. That is why a dead tree left another year or two tends to cost more to remove, not less.

Ash near the house

An ash over a roof, a driveway, or a neighbor’s fence cannot simply be felled. It is taken apart from the top down, and each section above something that matters is tied off, cut, and let down on a rope instead of being allowed to drop. With a dead ash the firm also has to judge which parts will carry that load, so some jobs call for smaller pieces or equipment that reaches the tree from outside its crown. Those choices appear on the estimate before you agree to anything.

What does ash tree removal cost in Franklin?

An ash is priced like any other Franklin tree of its size. A typical removal here runs about $850; a big ash with limbs reaching over the house sits in the large-hardwood band of $850 to $2,000; and one taller than eighty feet reaches $1,200 to $2,500 and up. An ash already lying on a roof after a storm costs two to three times what the same tree would on a calm day. The steps every job follows, from the first visit to the last of the cleanup, are set out in how a Franklin removal runs from visit to cleanup.

Removal only

For ash trees, Harlinsdale Tree Co arranges removal and nothing else, and the independent company that takes the request does the cutting and hauling. Injections, sprays and other insecticide work against the borer belong to a licensed pesticide applicator, a separate service not offered here, and nothing on this page is advice on whether a living ash can be kept.