Tree Service in Little Rock, AR

Tree service in Little Rock means planning for weather that comes from every direction. Ice storms, spring tornadoes, summer drought and the occasional heavy wet snow all leave their mark on the same yards. Add tall loblolly pines planted close to houses, century-old oaks in Hillcrest and the Heights, and steep wooded lots in west Little Rock, and most jobs come down to three questions: is the tree sound, what can it hit, and how do we get it cut back or brought down safely with the room available?

Ice and heavy snow

The National Weather Service office in Little Rock calls the December 2000 ice storms the worst icing in almost 70 years. By the evening of December 25, 2000, a massive ice storm was under way in the city, trees and power lines were coated, limbs fell onto houses, and more than 500,000 customers lost power, some for weeks. Twelve years later, the Christmas 2012 storm dropped 10.3 inches of snow on Little Rock and knocked out power to more than 200,000 customers across Arkansas. Ice and wet snow find the same weak points every time: long, heavy limbs over roofs, tight V-shaped forks, and trees with old decay. Thinning and shortening those limbs before winter is cheaper than cleaning up after they fail.

Tornado and wind damage

On March 31, 2023, an EF3 tornado crossed west and central Little Rock on a path of about 34 miles, through Chenal Valley, Breckenridge and Walnut Valley and on into North Little Rock, Sherwood and Jacksonville. More than 2,600 structures were damaged in Little Rock alone, and the city's cleanup collected about 130,000 cubic yards of trees, limbs and other organic debris. Many yards that came through still have trees with cracked tops, hangers caught in the crown, or roots that were loosened when the ground was soaked. Those trees do not always look bad from the street, which is why a close look matters.

Pines, oaks and the pests that follow drought

Loblolly pine is everywhere here, and it grows tall and fast. Arkansas forestry officials note that pine bark beetles go after trees stressed by drought, lightning or damage, with Ips engravers usually hitting one tree or a few at a time; signs include white pitch tubes on the bark, fine boring dust at the base and needles fading from yellow to red. Oaks have their own problem. The University of Arkansas extension service calls hypoxylon canker a common disease of oaks in Arkansas that takes hold in trees weakened by drought, construction injury or other stress, and it has no cure. Emerald ash borer is in the state as well: the Arkansas Plant Board added Pulaski County to its quarantine area in 2014, and federal forest health surveys counted the beetle in 44 of Arkansas's 75 counties in 2025.

City trees and permits

Little Rock's landscape and tree protection chapter makes it unlawful to remove a tree from a public right-of-way or other city-owned property without a permit, and the Public Works FAQ directs those requests to Parks and Recreation. The same FAQ says a permit is required for clearing land or cutting down more than seven trees in one year. On a typical home lot, removing a tree or two on your own property does not fall under the development rules, since the chapter exempts single-family and two-family zoned lots of two acres or less. For trees along the street, the code also asks owners to keep 14 feet of clearance over the roadway and 8 feet over sidewalks, and it prohibits topping those trees.

Get a Free Estimate

What an estimate covers

• A look at each tree: species, lean, dead wood, cracks, cankers and beetle signs
• What sits underneath: roof, carport, fence, pool, driveway, the neighbor's yard
• The service line from the pole and whether Entergy needs to disconnect it first
• Access: gates, slopes, retaining walls and how a chipper or lift can get in
• What happens to the logs, brush, chips and stump
• A written price per tree, with nothing added unless you approve it

Little Rock is the center of our area, from the river neighborhoods downtown and the Quapaw Quarter to Hillcrest, the Heights, Pulaski Heights, Chenal, west Little Rock and the southwest side toward Otter Creek. Across the river we work in North Little Rock, Sherwood, Maumelle and Jacksonville. To the southwest we cover Bryant, Benton and Alexander in Saline County, and to the north and east, Conway, Cabot and the smaller towns in between. Each place has its own mix: pines and steep ground in the west and in Saline County, older oaks and narrow lots in the historic neighborhoods, newer subdivisions with young trees and HOA rules in places like Chenal and Maumelle. Who owns the street trees and how brush gets picked up also differs from town to town, so check each area page for what we know about your city.