It is an island. Everything comes over a bridge. Water levels dictate soil conditions. Wind comes from every direction with nothing to break it. And the trees are big — we have removed cottonwoods here well over a hundred feet tall, including ones that drowned during the high-water years and had to come out from saturated ground.
What high water did to the island canopy
The record Great Lakes water levels of 2019 and 2020 left a lasting mark on Grosse Ile. Trees along the shoreline and in low-lying interior areas sat with their root zones submerged for months. Many species cannot tolerate that — roots suffocate without oxygen — and the die-off showed up over the following few seasons as canopies thinned and trees that had looked fine simply stopped leafing out.
One customer had two very large trees plus several smaller ones that drowned during those high-water years, including a cottonwood well over a hundred feet tall. That is a representative Grosse Ile job: large trees, compromised wood, saturated ground that will not support heavy equipment, and a finished property you cannot tear up. It is a three-day job for the right crew and an impossible one for the wrong one.
Where we work on Grosse Ile
We work the whole island — East River Road and West River Road shoreline properties, the interior neighborhoods off Meridian and Groh, the areas near the airport, and the estate parcels on the north end. Shoreline jobs almost always call for a crane or lift because there is rarely room between the house and the seawall to lower sections conventionally.
Island access means we plan mobilization carefully. Bringing a crane over the bridge is not something you improvise, so we survey the site properly and show up once with the right machine.
- East River Road shoreline
- West River Road shoreline
- Meridian Road corridor
- Groh Road area
- North island estates
- Airport vicinity
The island jobs other crews decline
Grosse Ile homeowners routinely tell us they called several companies first. The combination of very large trees, waterfront access constraints, saturated soil and finished landscaping filters out most of the field.
We have the equipment and the rigging experience for it, and we have done enough work on the island to know what we are walking into before we commit to a date. Our customers here have also been generous about referring neighbors — several of our island jobs came from someone watching us work down the road.
What customers say
From our 80 Google reviews — including this one left by a customer in Grosse Ile.
“Guys are great, hardworking, and quite frankly fearless. They removed two very large trees and several small ones that drowned during the years of high water on Grosse Ile. A cottonwood tree was well over 100 foot tall. Their equipment is state-of-the-art. Work took 3 days and they quoted the day I called. They cleaned up as well as can be expected and exceeded my previous two companies.”