Land clearing and lot clearing

Clearing selectively is worth more than clearing flat.

It is faster to level everything, and on a tight building envelope that is sometimes the right answer. But mature hardwoods are worth real money on a finished property, and once they are gone you are waiting thirty years. We would rather walk the lot with you first and mark what is worth keeping -- the specimen oaks, the shade over where the house will actually sit, the screen from the road -- and clear around them.

Protecting the trees you keep is most of the skill.

The usual way keeper trees die is not the saw, it is the machine traffic. Compacted soil and severed roots inside the critical root zone kill an oak two or three years after the excavator leaves, long after anyone connects the two. Fencing the drip line and routing equipment outside it is cheap while the work is happening and impossible afterward.

View clearing at the lake and on the ridges.

A lot of the clearing we do around Smith Mountain Lake and up on the ridges is about sightlines. Often the answer is not removal at all -- limbing up the lower canopy and thinning selectively opens the view while keeping the trees, the screening and the erosion control. Check your HOA and any shoreline rules first; the lake has them and they are enforced.

Land clearing work covers

• Building sites, driveways and utility runs
• Pasture and field reclamation from cedar, locust and briar
• View clearing and selective thinning
• Overgrown fence lines and property boundaries
• Storm-thinned or beetle-killed stands
• Stump grinding or full stump removal on the cleared area