Our Tree Services in Ottawa
From a single risky removal to full-yard cleanups, Max Trees handles it all across Ottawa — owner-operated, fully insured, and we always clean up before we leave.
Tree Removal
Dead, storm-damaged, or leaning too close to the house? We take it down safely and haul everything away.
Tree Pruning
Careful, healthy cuts that improve your trees’ shape, safety, and long-term growth.
Stump Grinding
We grind the stump below grade, fill the hole, and leave your yard smooth and ready.
Hedge Trimming
Overgrown hedges trimmed clean and even to bring back that sharp, tidy look.
Why Ottawa Homeowners Call Max Trees
Quotes in 48 Hours
Max comes out and looks at the tree, then your priced quote follows within 48 hours. No cost, no pressure.
Local Ottawa Crew
Real local people who know Ottawa yards, storms, and permit rules.
Fully Insured
Full liability coverage on every job. Certificate on request.
We Clean Up After
We haul the wood and rake up. Your yard is left tidy, not a mess.
Tree Removal
Taking a tree down safely is mostly a question of what is underneath it. In an open field a sound tree is felled in one piece in minutes. In an Ottawa back yard with a house on one side, a fence on the other and a hydro service drop overhead, the same tree is climbed and taken apart in controlled sections, each one roped and lowered rather than dropped. That difference — not the species, not the height — is what sets the price.
We remove hazardous, storm-damaged, dead and simply badly-placed trees across Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, including trees no machine can reach. Emerald ash borer has left a great many standing dead ash across the region, and those are time-sensitive: dead ash goes brittle within a couple of winters, and once it can no longer be trusted to hold a rigging load the job needs a bucket or a crane instead of a climber. Removed early, it is a straightforward job.
Chipping, haul-away and cleanup are included in the quoted price. Most Ottawa removals land between $500 and $2,500; our minimum charge for quoted work is $160. Full detail, pricing factors and FAQs on the tree removal page →
Tree Pruning
Good pruning is subtraction with a reason behind it. Deadwood comes out because it will fall eventually and you would rather choose when. A competing second leader comes out because two stems fighting for dominance is how a tree splits in a storm twenty years later. A crown gets thinned because a dense canopy loads up with wet March snow and sheds limbs over the driveway.
The highest-value pruning we do is structural work on trees between roughly ten and twenty-five years old — a morning of work that removes the defect which would otherwise become a four-figure removal decades later. Ottawa is full of trees at exactly that age, particularly in Barrhaven, Stittsville and newer Orléans.
We do not top trees. Cutting a mature tree back to stubs creates decay wounds and weak regrowth that fails more readily than what it replaced. If a tree is genuinely too big for its spot we will say so and give you the real options.
Best timing here is late winter, February to early April, before bud break — with oak and elm restricted to the dormant season to avoid oak wilt and Dutch elm disease. Full detail on the pruning page →
Stump Grinding
Grinding chews the stump down 20 to 30 cm below grade with a carbide wheel and leaves the root plate to break down naturally in the soil. Full excavation removal — digging the root ball out — means heavy equipment, a crater and a wrecked lawn, and is only worth it if you are building on the exact spot.
Stumps are priced by diameter measured at the root flare at ground level, starting at $250 for anything 30 cm across or under, rising to about $760 at 80 cm and $1,190 at a metre. Hardwoods add around 20 per cent; extra stumps on the same visit are half price. You do not need a site visit — send a photo with a shovel or a boot in frame for scale and you get a firm number back.
One thing worth planning around: Ontario One Call locates are mandatory before grinding near buried gas, hydro, water or telecom, and they take several business days. Full price table and FAQs →
Hedge Trimming
Hedges are the one job where the wrong cut cannot be undone. Eastern white cedar — which is most of Ottawa’s hedging — has no dormant buds in old brown wood, so anything cut back past the green stays bare permanently. A neglected hedge therefore gets renovated in stages across two seasons, not corrected in a single hard afternoon.
The other half of the job is shape. A hedge should be tapered, wider at the base than at the top, so light reaches the bottom growth. Cut straight up and down, it shades out its own base until the lower third thins and dies — which is why so many mature hedges are green on top and bare at knee height.
We trim, shape and renovate cedar and ornamental hedges across the region, with clippings chipped or bagged and hauled away and the beds raked before we leave. Best window is late June through early August, once the spring flush has hardened. Full detail on the hedge trimming page →
Cabling, Bracing and the Work That Saves a Tree
Not every problem tree needs to come down. A mature silver maple with a narrow V-shaped union and bark trapped inside it will eventually split — but a properly installed cable across that union costs a fraction of the removal and buys the tree decades. On a tree you could not replace in twenty years, that is usually the better decision.
Max is Tree Risk Assessment Qualified (TRAQ), which is a structured method for judging how likely a tree is to fail, what it would hit and how bad the outcome would be. The practical value of that is not the acronym — it is that you get a recommendation with a method behind it, including the recommendation not to spend money. We also deliver firewood and wood chips across the area. Ask about anything not listed →
Not sure which service you need?
Got a stump? Send us a photo and we’ll price it out. For tree work, book an on-site consultation — we reply within 24 hours, and your priced quote follows within 48 hours of the visit.