Tree Service in Franklin Square, NY

Franklin Square filled in by the early 1950s and never got any more room. The brick houses are still here, the lots are still forty by a hundred, and the trees that went in alongside them are now seventy to a hundred years old and a lot bigger than anyone planned for.

The permit question: curb strip versus your own yard

Franklin Square is an unincorporated hamlet in the Town of Hempstead. There's no village government and no village tree code, so the rule is the Town's Chapter 184, and what matters under it is where the tree stands.

The curbside strip belongs to the Town. Taking out a tree in that strip between the sidewalk and the street, or altering it in any serious way, needs a permit from the Commissioner of Highways. It's $25 for a residential lot and $150 where the tree abuts commercial property. The Town won't give you a permit to remove a healthy, growing tree, and whatever does come out has to be replaced from the Chapter 184 species list at a minimum two-inch trunk diameter, measured six inches above the ground.

Behind the curb line, it's generally yours. A tree fully on your own lot usually isn't permit-controlled the way the street tree is. Get that distinction right and the job is straightforward. Get it wrong and you'll be hearing from the Highway Department. Their number is 516-489-5000 if you'd rather confirm it yourself, and we'll tell you which side of the line your tree is on when we come look.

Why removals here are a rigging job

The typical Franklin Square lot is forty by a hundred, maybe sixty by a hundred, with a detached garage, a driveway down one side, and a fence close enough that you could shake hands with the neighbor across it. There's no drop zone. A seventy-year-old maple against the back of the house comes down in pieces on ropes, or a crane parks in the street and lifts the sections over the roof.

Access is its own problem. The chipper and the stump grinder have to fit down a side yard that might be five feet wide, so we run narrow-gate equipment and we check the gate before we quote. Nobody wants to find out at seven in the morning that the machine's six inches too wide.

A wind town, not a flood town

Franklin Square doesn't flood. It's inland western Nassau, well away from any coastal flood zone, and water isn't what brings trees down here. Wind is, working on over-mature, close-planted trees that outgrew their lots a long time ago.

Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020 is the one people still bring up. Sustained winds of thirty to fifty miles an hour with gusts over seventy, more than a thousand trees and 338 wires down across Nassau County, limbs across sidewalks and roads all over the hamlet, and a tree pulled out by the roots on Margaret Street. It came through at low tide with barely any rain. Pure wind, and it still stripped canopy out of western Nassau for days. Nor'easters do a smaller version of the same thing most winters.

That's the case for pruning before the season turns: deadwood out and weight off the long limbs, before the wind gets a chance to test them. More on trimming and pruning.

What we do in Franklin Square

• Tree removal - sectional rigging or crane on tight lots.
• Emergency and storm work - trees on houses and wires first. Wires down: PSEG at 1-800-490-0075.
• Trimming and pruning - the wind-season priority in this hamlet.
• Stump grinding - narrow-gate machines; pricing guide.

We cover Franklin Square and the streets running toward Elmont, West Hempstead, and Valley Stream, all of it two to three miles from us. Call (516) 619-3667 and we'll come look, put a number on paper, and tell you whether the curb tree needs the Town's permit before anyone touches it.