What this line is, and what it is not
Searching "tree service Houston" turns up hundreds of numbers, and the hard part is reaching one that answers, serves your side of town and handles the job you actually have. This site gives you a single number for all of it.
Tree Service Houston TX is a free phone line, not a tree company. It owns no trucks, employs no climbers and never sets a price. When you dial (346) 680-8916, an automated assistant picks up at any hour, asks what the tree is doing, and takes your name, a callback number and your city or ZIP. Your call is then transferred to an independent, locally owned tree service company that works where you live. That company hears a short summary before it answers, so you do not have to repeat yourself.
From there you deal with the company directly. It comes out, looks at the tree, quotes its own price, and if you agree, does the work and bills you. The line is paid, if at all, by the company in the form of a referral fee. You never pay the line anything.
Tree services you can call about
Each page explains what the job involves in the Houston area, what a careful company should do, and the questions to ask before anyone starts cutting. All of them are listed on the services page.
Tree Removal
Taking down a dead, leaning or unwanted tree near a Houston home, from water oaks and pines to big live oaks, and what a complete quote covers.
Tree Trimming
Getting limbs off the roof and away from the house, raising canopies over driveways and lightening heavy crowns before hurricane season.
Emergency and Storm Tree Removal
A tree on the house, the car or across the street after a hurricane, a derecho or a hard freeze. What to do first and how emergency work is handled.
Tree Pruning
Structural pruning for young trees and mature live oaks, what a proper cut looks like, oak wilt timing and why topping does harm.
Stump Grinding and Removal
Grinding a stump below the lawn, what happens to the roots and chips, utility locates and when full stump removal is worth it.
Crane Tree Removal
When a crane is the safest way to take a large tree over a house, how the lift is planned, and what it needs in street and driveway space.
Land and Lot Clearing
Clearing a building lot, a fence line or wooded acreage north and west of Houston, mulching versus hauling, and the rules that apply first.
Tree Debris Removal and Hauling
Hauling limbs, logs and storm debris, what curbside tree waste pickup takes, and when to have the tree company haul it instead.
Arborist Assessment and Tree Care
A certified arborist's look at a tree's health and risk, diseases common around Houston, and how to check an arborist's credentials.
How a call works
Four steps, and only the second one needs anything from you. The how it works page covers each step in detail.
- Call any hourAn automated assistant answers (346) 680-8916 and asks what kind of tree work you need.
- Describe the jobGive your name, a callback number, your city or ZIP and what the tree is doing, including anything on a roof, a car or a line.
- Get put throughThe call goes to an independent, locally owned tree service company, which hears a short summary before it picks up.
- Deal with them directlyThat company looks at the tree, quotes, does the work and is paid by you. If it cannot answer, it gets your details to call back.
What Houston asks of its trees
Houston's trees live with a Gulf Coast hurricane season, sudden spring and summer windstorms, the occasional hard freeze, and summers that can turn to drought. Most private tree work in the city traces back to one of those, or to a tree that simply outgrew the spot it was planted in. A few numbers put the picture in perspective.
- 33.3 millionLive trees in the City of Houston, according to a U.S. Forest Service study of the city's urban forest, with about 19.2 million of them on private land.
- June 1 to November 30The Atlantic hurricane season as defined by NOAA's National Hurricane Center.
- 50 percentThe share of tree cover in Houston's urbanized area that the Texas A&M Forest Service estimated was hit by hurricane force winds during Beryl in July 2024.
Storms that came from every direction
Hurricane Ike in September 2008 knocked out power to about 2.15 million of CenterPoint Energy's 2.26 million customers, with falling trees taking down lines across the region. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 did its damage with water: Texas A&M Forest Service teams found that trees in a flooded Harris County park looked fine the following spring and then began dying back months later, as root damage from standing water caught up with them.
The year 2024 brought two blows close together. On May 16, a derecho with gusts estimated up to 100 mph tore through the city, blowing out downtown windows and leaving about 800,000 customers in the Houston metro without power. Less than two months later, Hurricane Beryl left more than 2.2 million homes and businesses in the Houston area in the dark, many of the outages caused by fallen trees.
Freezes and droughts add up
Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 pushed temperatures at Bush Intercontinental Airport down to 13 degrees. Months later, the Texas A&M Forest Service reported that many oaks still had not leafed out, and noted that live oaks seemed the most stressed by that freeze. A regional forester told ABC13 that the stress of Uri and the dry summers of 2022 and 2023 was part of why so many trees failed in Beryl. A tree that came through one hard year can still be carrying the damage into the next storm.
Live oaks, water oaks and pines
Big oaks and tall pines define many Houston yards, and both are prone to the same weakness in a storm. Reporting after Beryl pointed to shallow root systems in oaks and pines, waterlogged soil and drought-weakened limbs as the main reasons trees came down, including young oaks planted after Ike that had not yet rooted deeply. That is why the most useful tree work often happens on a calm day well before June: removing dead wood, lifting limbs off the roof, and having a trained eye check old trees near the house.
Power lines and city trees are not a homeowner job
Two kinds of trees belong to someone else's process, and knowing which saves time and risk.
Trees near CenterPoint lines
CenterPoint Energy, which delivers power to most of the Houston area, has contract crews trim trees away from its distribution poles and wires. Branches around the lower voltage service drop that runs to your house are the homeowner's responsibility. To ask about a tree near a CenterPoint line, call its forestry team at 713-207-2222. If a line is down, sparking or touching a tree, stay far away and call 911.
Trees on city property
The City of Houston requires a permit to remove or trim any tree on city property, which includes street rights of way, medians and parks, or on a setback. The permit takes about 10 business days to process and has to be posted 20 days before the work. To report a dead or hazardous street tree, call 311 or 713-837-0311 so the city's Urban Forestry group can look at it.
How to pick a good tree service in Houston
Nobody can promise you the best tree service in Houston, and this line does not rank companies. What you can do is check the company in front of you before any work starts. Texas does not license tree trimmers or tree removal companies, so the questions you ask matter more than an ad or a truck door.
- Ask for insurance in writingRequest a certificate of general liability insurance sent directly by the company's insurance agent, plus proof of workers' compensation coverage.
- Ask who judges the treeFor any question about a tree's health or safety, get the name and ISA certification number of the arborist, then look it up yourself.
- Get the scope on paperThe written quote should say what happens to the logs, the brush and the stump, and who handles any city permit or utility call.
- Compare like with likeTwo quotes only compare fairly when they describe the same work, the same cleanup and the same timing.
Check the company yourself. Texas has no state license for tree trimming or tree removal, so a business card proves very little. Ask the company for a certificate of general liability insurance sent by its insurance agent, proof of workers' compensation coverage, and the ISA certification number of its arborist. A company that sprays or injects trees for hire needs a pesticide license from the Texas Department of Agriculture or its Structural Pest Control Service. You can confirm a certification with the ISA's credential lookup (opens in a new tab).
Not sure what the tree needs? Call and describe it. The company you are put through to looks at the tree and tells you the price before any work starts.
Guides for Houston homeowners
Straight answers on cost, permits, who pays, timing and storm prep, with every source listed at the bottom of each guide.
Tree Trimming Cost in Houston
What tree trimming usually costs, the published price ranges, and the details that move a Houston quote up or down.
Tree Removal Cost in Houston
What drives the price of taking a tree down: height, access, lines, cleanup, stump grinding and emergency work.
Houston Tree Removal Permits and Rules
When the City of Houston needs a permit, who owns the tree by the street, and the Texas law on tree mitigation fees.
Will the City Remove a Tree? Who Pays
City trees, CenterPoint lines, a neighbor's tree and homeowners insurance: who usually removes and pays for what in Houston.
When to Trim Trees in Houston
The best months to trim oaks and other Houston trees, oak wilt timing, and what proper trimming looks like.
Hurricane Season Tree Prep
What to check in your trees before June 1, which trees tend to fail in Gulf Coast storms, and what to do when a storm is coming.
Where the line takes calls
The line takes calls from the City of Houston and the suburbs around it in Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria and Galveston counties. Inside city limits, the Houston tree service page covers the neighborhoods, the city's tree rules, curbside tree waste pickup and the storms that shaped today's canopy. The service areas page explains how coverage works in the suburbs and why the tree rules change from one city to the next. If you are not sure whether your area is covered, call anyway and give the assistant your ZIP code.
- Houston-area service areas
- Houston
- Katy
- Sugar Land
- The Woodlands
- Spring
- Cypress
- Humble
- Pasadena
- Conroe
- Pearland
- League City
- Baytown
- Tomball
- Richmond
- Friendswood
- Missouri City
- Fulshear
How this line works: Tree Service Houston TX is a free phone line, not a tree service company. It does not trim, remove, quote or schedule tree work and holds no license or arborist certification. Calls are transferred to independent, locally owned tree service companies in the Houston area. Those companies may pay Tree Service Houston TX a referral fee. You never pay the line. How it works.