Tree Service in Lynbrook, NY

Lynbrook is about two miles from us, close enough that we can usually come look at a tree the same week you call. It's also its own village, with its own permit rules, and which permit applies to your tree is usually the first thing we sort out.

The Lynbrook permit question

Lynbrook is an incorporated village, not a piece of unincorporated Town of Hempstead. It runs its own Building Department, its own DPW, and its own code. Whatever you've read about Town of Hempstead tree rules, set it aside. They don't apply on this side of the line.

The curb strip belongs to the Village. You can't take down a shade tree on or next to a public sidewalk, street, or highway without a permit from the Superintendent of the Building Department. The good news is there's no fee. The catch is what you sign up for when you take the permit: removal at your own cost, a hold-harmless for the Village, and a replacement tree within four months. It has to be a live pin oak, willow oak, Bradford pear, or sophora, at least ten feet above sidewalk grade, and you have to keep it alive after that.

Your own yard is mostly yours. A tree behind the sidewalk line, on your property, usually isn't permit-controlled the way the curb tree is. If you're not sure where that line falls on your lot, ten minutes with the DPW at 548 Merrick Road (516-599-8838) will settle it before anyone quotes you.

One more thing to ask any company you call: Lynbrook licenses gardeners and landscapers each year through the Village Clerk. If the crew about to work on your street isn't licensed in the village they're standing in, you're allowed to ask why.

Why Lynbrook trees are a rigging job

Lynbrook's farms got cut up into house lots in the 1920s, back when it was the fastest-growing village in Nassau County. Most of the housing predates the war: colonials, Tudors, capes, and two-families on narrow lots, often around fifty feet wide, on a walkable grid of sidewalked, tree-lined streets.

The street canopy is roughly ninety to a hundred years old now, planted tight against sidewalks and foundations, and there's nowhere to drop anything. We climb and rig these in sections, or set a crane in the street and lift pieces out over the roofline. There's no side yard for a bucket truck on most of these lots, and the drop zone is usually a neighbor's roof or a parked car. The plan matters more than the saw.

The other Lynbrook special is root heave. Century-old street trees pushing against pre-war sidewalks and clay sewer laterals are why you see lifted slabs all over the village. Sometimes the fix is a sidewalk, not a removal, and we'll tell you if that's what we see.

Storms, the Mill River, and saturated ground

The Mill River starts up in Hempstead Lake State Park and runs through Lynbrook toward East Rockaway and Bay Park. During Sandy in 2012 it came up over its banks and into the houses along them. Lynbrook now sits inside the post-Sandy Mill River resiliency corridor, and Ida in 2021 dropped record rainfall on it all over again.

For trees, wet ground is the problem. Soil that keeps getting saturated around a shallow-rooted mature tree on a small lot makes the whole root plate far more likely to lift in wind. That's how a tree that looked fine in September ends up across the driveway after a nor'easter, root ball standing on edge like a door. If the ground on one side of your tree is cracked or mounded, have someone look at it before the next storm instead of after. The full checklist is at signs a tree is dying or dangerous.

What we do in Lynbrook

• Tree removal - sectional rigging or crane, sized to a fifty-foot lot.
• Emergency and storm work - trees on houses and wires first. Wires down: PSEG at 1-800-490-0075 before anyone else.
• Trimming and pruning - deadwood and weight off the limbs over the roof, before storm season rather than after.
• Stump grinding - priced by the inch; see the Long Island cost guide.

We also cover North Lynbrook and the streets running toward East Rockaway and Malverne. Every estimate is written and itemized, with removal, stump, haul-away, and permit each on its own line, so you can hold it up next to the other quotes: (516) 619-3667.