What I Found When I Actually Walked My Property Looking for Hazardous Trees
I have lived in the same house in Monmouth County for eleven years and until this spring I had never done a deliberate, systematic walk around my property looking specifically at my trees as potential storm hazards. I have a lot of trees -- six large shade trees, a couple of ornamental dogwoods, and several big Norway maples I have always considered more nuisance than concern because of the surface roots. I looked at them every time I mowed and figured I would notice if something looked wrong.
This past spring I read something from a cooperative extension service about tree hazard assessment that made me reconsider whether casual observation was actually sufficient. The article described warning signs I would not have known to look for, and some of them were specifically described as things that look stable on the surface until they don't. I decided to actually walk the property and look at each tree the way the article described.
What I found was more interesting than I expected.
The Walk
I started at the edge of the property and moved inward, stopping at each significant tree for a real look -- not a passing glance, but a deliberate examination of the base, the trunk, and what I could see of the crown.
At the first big red oak I did what the guide suggested and pulled back the mulch from the base. I had been piling mulch close to the trunk for years because I read somewhere that mulch was good for trees. It is good for trees, but apparently not when it's piled in a cone against the bark. Under the mulch, the bark looked fine -- no obvious decay, no mushy spots, nothing alarming. But I left the mulch as a flat ring after that, kept back a few inches from the bark.
The Norway maples I had been dismissing were actually less concerning than I expected from the outside. The surface roots I always trip on are annoying but not a sign of structural failure on their own. The crown on both of them looked reasonable -- no dead branches I could see from the ground, no obvious asymmetry. I am still watching them because they're large and I know Norway maples tend to develop co-dominant stems as they age. But neither one flagged anything immediate.
The Two That Got My Attention
The sugar maple near the back corner of the property stopped me longer than the others. The trunk looked normal, but when I looked at the ground around the base, the soil on the northwest side of the tree was slightly higher than the surrounding ground -- a subtle, humped quality that I had just never noticed before. I probed the soil there with a screwdriver. It went in more easily than I expected for what should have been solid, well-rooted ground.
I called Hufnagel Tree Service to ask about it -- they work the western part of the county and I had gotten their name from a neighbor -- and they explained that what I was seeing could be early root plate movement, where the roots on the opposing side have begun to lose integrity and the root plate is starting to lever. They recommended professional assessment before storm season peaked.
The second tree was a silver maple along the fence line that I always knew was not a great tree structurally. I had just never looked at it closely. From the ground I could see two major stems splitting from a central point in a tight V angle. When I looked at the junction with binoculars, I could see that the bark in the center of the V was compressed inward -- what I later learned is what included bark looks like. The two stems had never bonded across that junction. I was looking at a pre-existing separation that holds together until a storm provides enough force to lever it open.
Both of those trees got professional assessments. The sugar maple assessment found the root plate was less compromised than the surface heaving suggested, but identified a base cavity that the soil heaving had been obscuring. The silver maple assessment confirmed the included bark and resulted in removing one co-dominant stem and installing a cable to support the remaining structure.
What Changed About How I Think About This
I think the part that surprised me most was how much was not visible from where I normally stand when I look at my trees. I look at them from the house, from the driveway, from the back deck. I see the crown and the general shape of the trunk. What I was not seeing was the base, the soil, the bark at ground level, the details of branch junctions.
I also had not been distinguishing between stable-looking observations and genuinely stable observations. A tight V-fork looks the same whether it has held for 30 years and is fine or whether it has been slowly weakening and will fail in the next big storm. You cannot tell the difference from the outside.
The Rutgers Cooperative Extension at njaes.rutgers.edu has materials on tree hazard assessment that gave me useful background before I did the walk. And Middletown Tree Service's guides on what specifically to look for at the base of trees, at the trunk, and in the crown were more specific than the general guides I had found elsewhere.
The International Society of Arboriculture at isa-arbor.com has a certified arborist finder that I used when I wanted to verify that the people I was calling actually had professional credentials. Useful.
What I Would Tell Someone Who Has Not Done This Yet
Do the walk now, not at the end of summer. Storm season is already underway and the window between now and the most intense storms in July and August is shorter than it feels.
Pay attention to the base, not just the trunk and crown. That is where the least obvious and most consequential signs often are. Take your time at the base of each large tree -- actually look at the soil, pull back mulch if you've been piling it against the trunk, probe with a screwdriver. The observations that matter most are often not visible from a standing position a few feet away.
Get professional assessment on anything that concerns you enough to stop and look twice. The cost of an assessment is low compared to what you are actually trying to prevent. I had delayed getting assessments on both of those trees because I was not sure the concerns were serious enough to warrant a call. They were.
One other thing I would add: document what you see on the walk with photos. I have pictures from this spring walk that I can compare to photos from prior years, and from my current assessments going forward. That comparison is how you distinguish between a sign that is changing and a sign that has been stable for years. Without the photos, you're relying on memory, which is not reliable enough for structural details.
I had lived with those two problem trees for eleven years without knowing what I had. That is not an unusual situation, from what I hear from neighbors who have gone through the same exercise. The trees look fine until they do not, and the signs that tell you which kind you have are not visible from the driveway.
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels
