Twenty-plus years of removals, trimming, palm work and stump grinding across Lee, Collier and Hendry counties, with a written estimate before anything is cut.
Bonita Springs Tree Removal has spent twenty-plus years removing, trimming and cleaning up trees and palms in Bonita Springs, Florida, and the work covers what a property here actually needs: hazard tree removal, tree trimming and pruning, stump grinding, palm trimming and palm removal, land and lot clearing, storm damage response, root pruning, hedge and brush work, disease treatment and crane-assisted takedowns. We work across Lee, Collier and Hendry counties, which in practice means three sets of rules for one job.
Every job starts with a written estimate, and hauling and disposal are priced as their own line rather than folded into a lump sum, because the wood is often the part that moves the number. On any tree we recommend taking down, the reason goes into a written condition report first, so the decision is on the record before the saw starts.
Palms and hardwoods are handled as the different jobs they are, by crews who know a palm has no branch collar to cut to and no way to grow replacement trunk tissue. We do not top, we do not hat rack, and we do not perform hurricane cuts on any tree or palm, whoever asks. Seasonal and second-home owners get written findings and photographs, so an inspection still means something when nobody is standing in the yard.
What we do
Tree removal, palms and stump grinding in Bonita Springs, Florida
Tree risk assessment and arborist inspections in Bonita Springs: written condition reports, defect findings, and a straight answer on whether a tree must go.
Stump grinding and full stump removal in Bonita Springs, with a stated below-grade depth and the grindings, backfill and haul-off priced separately.
Tree trimming and pruning in Bonita Springs: crown thinning, reduction and deadwood work cut to a live lateral, never topped and never hat racked.
Palm trimming and palm removal in Bonita Springs, priced by species and cut to the nine and three rule. No hurricane cuts, on any palm, for anyone.
Land and lot clearing in Bonita Springs: forestry mulching, selective clearing, grubbing and exotic removal, with the trees you are keeping fenced first.
Emergency and storm damage tree removal in Bonita Springs: trees on structures, hanging limbs, lifted root plates and storm debris handled in order of risk.
Hedge trimming, shrub renovation and brush removal in Bonita Springs, from privacy screens and overgrown beds to exotic thickets hauled off by the ton.
Tree and palm disease diagnosis and plant health care in Bonita Springs, including what is treatable, what is not, and what the soil is doing to the roots.
Root pruning and tree root removal in Bonita Springs: sewer laterals, septic drain fields and lifted hardscape, with the tree's anchorage assessed first.
Crane assisted tree removal in Bonita Springs for trees over pool cages, seawalls and tight lots, where there is no safe drop zone and no rigging path.
Mangrove trimming on Bonita Springs waterfront lots, worked to the Mangrove Trimming and Preservation Act with the shoreline surveyed before anything is cut.
Invasive and exotic tree removal in Bonita Springs, including the code-required species lists, cut-stump treatment and the follow-up visits that keep it done.
Twenty-plus years in this market means a specific set of problems rather than tree work in general: sand and cemented hardpan instead of soil over rock, laurel oaks reaching the end of a fifty-to-seventy-year life span in yards platted at the same time, palms failing from disease rather than decay, and a storm season that sets everyone’s calendar. It also means watching what a shortcut costs on the second visit.
Every removal we recommend carries a dated report naming the defect, the target beneath it and the realistic failure direction, so the decision survives a conversation with an insurer, an association or a neighbor rather than resting on a verbal opinion nobody can produce six months later.
No two of Lee, Collier and Hendry answer a vegetation removal question the same way, and Bonita Springs adds a city layer on top, so we tell you which rule your address sits under before the crew is booked rather than when an inspector arrives.
A palm has one growing point and a trunk diameter fixed for life, so an over-pruned palm keeps a permanent constriction where a hardwood would compartmentalize and move on. Our palm work is cut to the nine and three clock rule, so the palm keeps the mass that steadies it rather than being stripped to a feather duster.
Every quote names the machine that will actually reach the trunk, from a narrow-gate mini loader through a fenced side yard to a crane pick over a pool cage, so nobody arrives with a truck that cannot fit and turns one removal into two mobilizations.
Hauling and dump fees appear separately at a stated rate, because horticultural waste is weighed at the gate and a clean load prices differently from a mixed one, so you can see what the wood costs to move rather than watching it vanish into one unexplained number.
Canopy work that reduces storm risk is scheduled in spring and early summer while there is room on the calendar, so the pre-season list and the emergency list stay separate rather than every customer competing for one crew the week a system enters the Gulf.
Once a hurricane warning is posted for this coast, most insurers stop writing and stop endorsing, and the tree work you wanted becomes work you are doing in a queue. It also changes who pays: damage a healthy tree does in a named storm is generally a claim against your deductible, while damage from a tree already documented as defective is a different conversation. We push canopy reduction and hazard removal into spring for that reason.
A structurally sound tree with a well-distributed crown slows wind at the wall and takes debris out of the air before it reaches glass, which is the opposite of the assumption that every tree near a house is a liability. The ones that fail carry included bark at a co-dominant union, a decayed root plate, or a crown dense enough to act as a sail. We reduce and thin to fix that, and remove only what cannot be fixed.
The hurricane cut, sometimes sold as a storm trim, strips a palm back to a handful of upright fronds. Extension research measured the result directly: hurricane-cut palms were more likely to have their crowns snapped off than palms left with fuller crowns, because the horizontal fronds are the mass that steadies the bud. A palm cannot regrow trunk, so the narrowing stays for life, and we decline the job rather than sell it.
A tree that has always leaned and has straightened its top toward vertical is usually doing what it has done for years. A tree leaning with fresh soil heaving on the opposite side of the trunk is a different animal: that mound is the root plate lifting, the anchorage has already failed, and it is not a wait-and-see. We look at the ground before the lean, and that one distinction decides a great many calls.
Salt water standing over a root zone kills slowly and out of sequence. The federal report on Hurricane Ian records maximum inundation of eight to twelve feet above ground level in Estero, Bonita Beach, Bonita Springs and North Naples, with inland high water marks of five to seven feet. Trees inside that footprint can hold green canopy for a season or two before declining, so we inspect inundated lots for delayed mortality rather than assuming survival.
County storm debris programs collect what a resident piles at the right of way, and they are choosier than people expect. Collier County’s eligibility turns on the contract itself: the pile qualifies only where disposal is not part of the contractor’s scope of work or contract price, and the owner may be asked to document that. A drop-only line exists on our storm estimates for exactly that reason.
A tree in contact with an energized conductor is a utility call, not a tree service call, and it stays that way until the line is confirmed de-energized or the utility clears the site. Wet wood conducts, a fallen conductor can energize a fence or a driveway well away from the tree, and no ladder or aerial device belongs near it. We take the tree apart afterward; we are not the ones who touch it first.
Four operators in this ring advertise immediate storm response and none states the limit the industry safety standard actually sets, which is that aerial work and work near energized conductors do not happen in high wind. A climber cannot control a piece in a gust and a bucket is a lever in the wrong direction. We answer the phone during a storm and triage during a storm; cutting starts when the wind is down.
Florida Statutes section 163.045 bars a local government from requiring notice, application, approval, permit, fee or mitigation for pruning, trimming or removing a tree on residential property where the owner possesses signed documentation from an ISA-certified arborist or a Florida licensed landscape architect stating the tree poses an unacceptable risk. Subsection (3) also bars any replanting requirement. The word doing the work is possesses: the document exists before anything is cut, not after somebody objects.
The 2022 amendment replaced the old presents-a-danger wording with a defined standard, and the definition is stricter than it sounds. Unacceptable risk means removal is the only means of practically mitigating the tree’s risk below moderate, measured against the ISA Best Management Practices Tree Risk Assessment, Second Edition, 2017. If reducing the crown, taking one limb or installing a cable gets the risk below moderate, the exemption fails and the local permit is still live.
Section 163.045 reaches residential property defined as a single-family detached building on a lot actively used for single-family residential purposes, which is a narrow door. A duplex, a townhome, an attached villa, a condominium building and a mobile home in a co-op all sit outside it, and so does the association-owned common area behind any of them. Reading the statute without its definition is how an owner cuts under an exemption they never had.
Vacant and platted-but-unbuilt lots are excluded too, along with commercial, industrial and agricultural land, which matters on a coast holding this much attached and seasonal housing. A condominium owner on the coastal strip can fall outside the permit preemption and outside the county storm debris program in the same breath. For those properties we work the ordinary permit route with the association or the manager, and we say so at estimate time.
Lee County runs vegetation removal permitting through its Land Development Code, Collier through Land Development Code section 3.05.00, and Hendry on its own schedule, while Bonita Springs, Sanibel, Marco Island and Naples each add a municipal layer. The City of Bonita Springs permit application lists only two valid reasons to remove a tree and neither is a hazard tree, and its hurricane guidance draws the line at dead versus damaged. We work the address, not the county name.
Subsection (4) of section 163.045 expressly excludes mangroves, so no arborist letter clears a mangrove of anything. Mangroves are governed by the Mangrove Trimming and Preservation Act, the state certifies professional mangrove trimmers to do the work, and cutting beyond what the act allows is an enforcement matter rather than a code violation. On a waterfront lot the mangrove fringe, the Coastal Construction Control Line and the upland trees are three separate legal questions.
The general rule is that you may prune what crosses your property line, to the line, at your own expense, and you may not cross it or prune so severely that you kill the tree. What settles these disputes in practice is documentation rather than the rule: a dated condition report describing structure, defects and probable failure direction gives both owners and both insurers something to work from. We supply that report and cut only to the line.
A condition report records what was standing on a given date: species, diameter, the defects found, the targets beneath, the assessment method used, and the recommendation with its reasoning. It is the document section 163.045 contemplates when signed by a qualified assessor, and it is also what an association board, an insurer or a buyer’s inspector asks for later. Removing a tree without one leaves you defending a decision with nothing but memory.
A co-dominant union with included bark is a real defect and often a repairable one. A dynamic cable installed in the upper crown shares load between the two stems and buys years, while a subordination cut on the weaker leader shifts growth away from the union at the same time. We quote that option beside the removal whenever it honestly applies, because a customer told the truth about a fixable tree believes us about the next one.
A palm is a monocot with one growing point at the top of the trunk, no cambium, no lateral meristem and no branch collar, so it cannot compartmentalize a wound, add girth, or replace a lost bud. Trunk diameter is set at the height it grew, permanently. Almost every rule governing a hardwood inverts here, and one ranking local page in this market still advises pruning palms in a dormant season palms do not have.
Read the palm crown as a clock face and remove nothing above the nine and three line, which means everything horizontal or higher stays. Fronds below that line may come off when dead, broken or genuinely in the way. The rule exists because a palm draws nutrients from aging fronds and because the horizontal fronds damp trunk movement in wind. Cutting above it is the hurricane cut under a politer name.
Strip a palm repeatedly and the trunk it builds afterward is narrower than the trunk below it, tapering to what the trade calls a pencil point. Because a palm cannot lay down new trunk tissue outward, that narrowing is permanent and becomes a fixed snap point for the rest of the palm’s life. Where we find pencil-pointing we say plainly whether the palm is still worth keeping, and correcting the practice is often the whole job.
Ganoderma zonatum causes a butt rot in the lower four to five feet of trunk that cannot be treated, cured or arrested, and it is generally undiagnosable until the shelf-shaped conk appears at the base. By then the internal trunk is compromised and removal is the only answer. The fungus persists in the soil almost indefinitely, so a replacement palm in the same hole is a poor bet, and we grind the stump and say so.
Lethal bronzing is a phytoplasma with a latency of roughly four to five months and a host list running past twenty palm species, and the sequence is diagnostic: premature fruit drop, a bronzing running from the oldest fronds upward, then spear leaf collapse. Once the spear collapses the palm is lost. Neighboring host palms can be protected with trunk injections repeated every three to four months for at least two years, which is a program rather than a visit.
A mature royal palm sheds a self-cleaning frond about once a month, and a royal frond with its heavy costapalmate base can weigh fifty pounds and fall from sixty feet. Nothing is wrong with the palm; that is how a crownshaft palm works. What matters is what sits underneath, which on this coast is usually a pool cage, a lanai roof, a parked car or a walkway, so we schedule crown cleanings around targets rather than a calendar.
Sabal palmetto carries a costapalmate fan and often a persistent boot pattern on the trunk; queen palm has a soft feather frond, a gray trunk and heavy seed drop; royal palm shows a smooth green crownshaft and a swollen trunk; Mexican fan has a slender trunk under a fan and, untrimmed, a long frond skirt. Species sets the price class, the trimming interval and the disease risk, which is why we identify before quoting.
A palm root system is adventitious, emerging at its final diameter and running out shallow and fibrous rather than tapering, so a palm stump behaves nothing like a hardwood stump under a grinder. Cut roots on sabal palmetto branch at a very low rate, so severing them produces none of the regrowth a hardwood gives. Grinding is usually faster but wetter and messier, and where Ganoderma is present the grindings themselves need handling.
Our removal price covers taking the tree down and getting the wood and brush off the property. The stump, the grindings, backfill, sod repair and any root work are separate lines with their own numbers, and so is hauling. Written that way you can decline the parts you do not want, which is impossible when a company hands you one figure and you cannot tell whether the stump was ever inside it.
Grinding does not remove a stump; it converts it into a crater and a mound of grindings two to three times the volume of the hole, because the material is aerated on the way out. Somebody has to decide whether those grindings go back in, get hauled, or get raked and topped with soil for sod. That decision is a line item on our estimate, because a customer who was not told stands over a mound.
A typical below-grade cut runs twelve to twenty-five inches depending on the machine and the access, and depth is a function of what the wheel meets rather than of intent. Under a driveway edge, a pool deck or an irrigation main, the safe depth is whatever clears the obstruction. We ask what is buried before cutting and state on the estimate what depth we are committing to, rather than quoting a number that assumes clean ground.
Bonita Springs sits on at least three soils that say three different things to a grinder. On Myakka fine sand the cemented spodic hardpan runs about twenty to thirty-six inches down and the seasonal high water table sits under eighteen inches for one to four months a year. On depressional soils inland the sand is clean past the wheel but the ground ponds. On tidal muck near the water there is nothing solid to stand a machine on.
Roots enter a sewer lateral at a joint or a crack and colonize it, so the fix is a plumbing repair plus root pruning at the trench, not a promise that a tree will stop growing toward water. A septic drain field is harder: roots there can end the field, and cutting them may also cut the tree’s anchorage on that side. We map the root plate with an air spade first, so nobody trades a plumbing problem for a failure direction.
There is no firewood market in a subtropical climate and palm is not firewood in any climate, so the woodpile answer that works in a cold state does not exist here. Material goes to a permitted horticultural waste facility, gets weighed, and comes back into the market as mulch. Lee County resells its chips by the cubic yard, which is worth knowing when you are buying mulch in the same month you pay to send some away.
Horticultural waste is charged by weight at the gate and clean loads price below mixed ones, which is why soil, fencing, roofing scrap and construction debris stay out of the trailer even when throwing them in would be convenient. Origin matters too: the same facility can charge a different per-ton rate for material coming from a different county. The disposal rate appears on the estimate so the number is checkable rather than absorbed.
Clearing a lot is a site-work job as much as a tree job, and the decision that matters is what stays. Forestry mulching processes small stems in place and leaves a mat that controls erosion on sand, while grubbing pulls root balls and leaves ground a builder can work. Either way the specimen trees you intend to keep need their root plates fenced before the first machine moves, because compaction shows up two years later.
In several jurisdictions in this ring, removing exotics is not a preference. Sanibel requires named invasive species removed before a certificate of occupancy and kept out afterward in perpetuity, and Collier County’s Land Development Code section 3.05.08 imposes a comparable obligation. Australian pine, melaleuca, Brazilian pepper and earleaf acacia are the usual targets, and each behaves differently under a machine. We clear to the applicable list and document what came out.
Bonita Springs Tree Removal provides tree-removal throughout the greater Bonita Springs area, with the same crews and the same standards on every job.
Good to know
There is no honest flat number, and the cost pages that publish one are not describing your tree. Price is driven by height and spread, what sits underneath, whether a crane or a narrow-gate machine has to reach the trunk, and how far the wood travels to a scale. We quote in writing after someone has stood in the yard, with hauling and disposal on their own line.
Sometimes not, and the exemption is narrower than most homeowners hope. Florida Statutes section 163.045 bars a local government from requiring notice, application, approval, permit, fee or mitigation to prune, trim or remove a residential tree when the owner already possesses signed documentation from an ISA-certified arborist or a Florida licensed landscape architect that the tree poses an unacceptable risk. It reaches only single-family detached homes.
Florida issues no tree or arborist contractor license, so nobody in this state holds one. Section 163.211 preempts local occupational licensing and the last grandfathered local certificates expired on July 1, 2025, which is why a company advertising a tree license here is describing something else. Ask for a certificate of insurance and a written scope instead.
No, and we will not do one on any palm for any customer. Extension research found hurricane-cut palms were more likely to have their crowns snapped off than palms carrying a fuller crown, because the horizontal fronds are the mass that steadies the bud. A palm builds no new trunk tissue, so the damage is permanent.
Never, on any tree, whoever asks. Topping cuts to a stub instead of a lateral, so the tree answers with weakly attached sprouts growing from the edge of a wound it cannot close. The City of Bonita Springs writes the same rule into its own hurricane document: required vegetation must not be severely pruned to permanently maintain growth at a reduced height or spread.
A grinder rated to roughly twelve to twenty-five inches below grade is the usual tool, and what stops it here is rarely rock. On Myakka fine sand the cemented spodic hardpan sits about twenty to thirty-six inches down; on depressional soils inland the limit is standing water. Grinding leaves a crater and a mound, so backfill appears on the estimate either way.
It goes to a permitted horticultural waste facility and is weighed at the gate, which is why a clean load matters. Lee County charges less per ton for clean horticultural waste than for mixed debris, so soil, fencing and construction scrap stay out of the trailer. There is no firewood season here and palm is not firewood, so the wood becomes county mulch.
In general you may cut back what crosses the property line, to the line and no further, at your own cost, and you may not kill the tree doing it. That is a legal question as much as a tree question, so we supply the technical half: a dated written condition report naming the structure, the defects and the realistic failure direction.
We book pre-season work in spring and early summer precisely so the emergency list stays short in September, and afterward we triage by what is on a structure, a driveway or a walkway rather than by who called first. Nobody climbs and no aerial device goes up while wind is still running. Anything near a power line waits for the utility.
It depends on which problem it has, and two common ones have no treatment at all. Ganoderma butt rot in the lower trunk cannot be cured and is invisible until the conk forms, and Thielaviopsis trunk rot can drop a crown off a palm that still looks healthy. Lethal bronzing is different: the palm showing spear leaf collapse is lost, but neighboring host palms can be held with repeated injections.
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