Valley is where the metro runs out and the wind gets a full head start. Between the lake developments, the acreages and the old windbreaks, our Valley work is about one thing more than any other: trees standing in the open.
The lake developments
Valley's lake communities put houses, docks and expensive landscaping right at the waterline. Trees here do double duty — shade and privacy — and a failure drops limbs on boats and roofs instead of open lawn. Lakefront work rewards careful rigging and honest pruning.
The windbreaks
The farmstead windbreaks around Valley are some of the hardest-working trees we manage: cedar, spruce and pine rows that have taken decades of open-country wind. Many are thinning from needle cast, losing members, and due for the renewal planting that keeps a windbreak from dying all at once.
The exposure
Valley sits on open ground near where the Elkhorn meets the Platte valley, and storms arrive with nothing to slow them. Wind is the design constraint for every tree decision here — what to plant, how to prune it, and when to admit one is done.
An arborist can usually be in Valley within the week. Storm calls are same day.
Windbreaks thinning out
Needle cast working up spruce rows, cedars dying in patches. A windbreak with gaps stops working; renewal planting fixes it in stages.
Storm-split trees on open lots
Straight-line wind finds every weak crotch. Some splits are cable-and-brace saves; some are removals, and we say which on the spot.
Lakefront trees over structures
Big trees leaning over docks, decks and rooflines, where a failure is expensive in every direction.
Flood-stressed ground
The 2019 flood reached ground around Valley too, and some trees that stood in water are still declining from it.
Support for wind-stressed unions before the storm finds them.
The fungus thinning Valley's spruce windbreaks, confirmed before it is sprayed.
Open-country giants and storm losses, with a written price first.
Windbreak renewal and lake-lot shade, chosen for exposure, not the catalog.
A walk of the acreage with an arborist and a written plan.
They strip cedars and junipers fast out here. Timing is everything.
~30 min
From our Gretna shop
Out the west edge of the route. Valley and Waterloo get scheduled together, which keeps trips efficient.
1997
Family owned since
Acreage and windbreak work has been part of the business from the start.
26
Towns served
Valley marks the western end of the map.
Same day
Storm response
Open-ground towns take the worst of the wind, and we route storm crews accordingly.
“Story and crew did an excellent job. Very professional, courteous and safety conscious. They did an amazing job trimming and pruning trees and made sure everything was cleaned up afterwards.”
Usually the row can be saved even when individual trees cannot. Bottom-up thinning on spruce is typically needle cast, which is treatable if it is caught early, and the trees past saving get replaced in phases so the windbreak never stops working. Replacing a whole mature row at once is the outcome we plan to avoid.
Yes. Lakefront lots are careful-rigging jobs — limbs come down over water, docks and roofs, not open lawn — and we plan them that way. We also advise on species for shoreline planting, since not everything tolerates feet that wet.
Wind-firm species with strong architecture: bur oak, hackberry, Kentucky coffeetree, and for windbreaks a mix of species rather than a single row of one — so one disease cannot take the whole thing, which is exactly what is happening to the all-spruce rows planted decades ago.
Depends entirely on the tree. A good tree with one weak union is a textbook cabling save at a fraction of removal cost. A tree with decay in the union is not, and cabling it would be taking your money to postpone the inevitable. We put the answer in writing either way.
Yes — water reached ground around Valley, and trees that stood in it can decline for years afterward as damaged roots give out. If a tree has looked a little worse each season since, that is worth an assessment before it stands over another storm season.
That is how we prefer to do it: an arborist consultation walks the entire property once, produces a written plan, and then the work gets sequenced by urgency and budget. It is cheaper and saner than calling someone out for one tree at a time.
Estimates are free everywhere on the route, and the drive is never on the invoice.
Every tree decision in Valley is a wind decision. What species to plant, whether a crotch needs a cable, how much crown a pruning should remove, whether the old cottonwood by the lake gets one more year — the answer changes when the tree stands on flat, open ground near two river valleys with nothing upwind to protect it. Work that would be routine in a sheltered Omaha neighborhood needs more conservative judgment here, and we apply it.
The windbreaks deserve particular honesty. Many of Valley's spruce and cedar rows were planted as single-species stands, and single-species stands fail together — needle cast or bagworms arrive and the whole row goes at once. The fix is not heroic spraying of trees that are already done; it is treating the saveable ones and interplanting the row with a mix, in phases, so the protection never lapses. That is slower and less dramatic than what some companies will sell you, and it works.
Valley is the far end of our route, thirty minutes from the shop, and we schedule it honestly — grouped with Waterloo, planned in advance. What the distance does not change: free estimates, written prices, arborists, and same-day response when the wind wins one.
