Denver Tree Service & Certified Arborist | Ironwood Earthcare

Denver Tree Removal, Pruning & Treatment · Certified Arborist Since 2003

Denver tree service for a city with 330,000 ash trees

Removal, pruning, stump grinding and trunk injections across Denver. An ISA Certified Arborist identifies what you actually have before anything is quoted — and in this city, roughly one tree in six turns out to be an ash.

Denver licenses tree companies and requires a permit to inject a right-of-way tree. We will tell you which side of the sidewalk your tree is on before we quote it.

GET MY FREE ARBORIST ASSESSMENT CALL AN ARBORIST: 303-366-3020

Free on-site assessment · Written quote · No obligation

  • ISA Certified Arborist
  • Colorado-Based Since 2003
  • 4.8★ from 191 Google Reviews
  • Licensed & Fully Insured

330,000

Ash trees in Denver, roughly

1 in 6

Denver trees that are ash

27,000

Ash in the public right-of-way

2025

EAB confirmed in Denver

What tree services does Ironwood do in Denver?

Ironwood Earthcare is an ISA Certified Arborist tree service working across Denver since 2003. The six services are tree removal, tree trimming and pruning, stump grinding, pest and disease control, trunk injections, and lawn fertilization and weed control. Denver requires a licence to trim or remove trees for compensation inside the city, and a separate city forester permit to trunk-inject or remove a tree in the public right-of-way.

WHAT WE DO
Tree removal, trimming and pruning, stump grinding, pest and disease control, trunk injections, and lawn care.
WHY ASH KEEPS COMING UP
About 330,000 ash trees stand in Denver, roughly one in six. EAB was confirmed here on 17 June 2025.
THE LICENCE RULE
DRMC 57-71 makes it unlawful to trim or remove trees for compensation in Denver without a licence.
THE PERMIT RULE
DRMC 57-20 makes it unlawful to trunk-inject a right-of-way tree without a city forester permit.
MOST COMMON STREET TREE
Honeylocust, at about 23,780 in the public inventory — but ash as a group is larger.
WHAT IT COSTS
The on-site assessment and the written quote are free. No deposit, nothing to sign on the spot.

The number nobody says out loud: 330,000

Denver’s public tree inventory has honeylocust as the single most common street tree at about 23,780. Green ash sits at 23,244 and white ash at 10,123 — so ash as a group already outnumbers the honeylocust the city planted to replace it.

That is the whole story of Denver’s canopy in three numbers. Carrie Tomlinson of the Colorado State Forest Service said it about the region: “Ash were, many times, planted as a replacement for elms in the landscape because of Dutch elm disease. Now we’re having to go through the same thing with the ash trees because we didn’t support a diversity of species to replace the elms.”

City Forester Luke Killoran has said Denver is ready: “We learned a lot in Lakewood, and we are ready to respond in Denver to limit the effects EAB could have on our tree canopy.” That readiness covers the 27,000 ash the city maintains. It does not cover yours.

GET MY FREE ARBORIST ASSESSMENT CALL AN ARBORIST: 303-366-3020

Two Denvers, two completely different tree jobs

A Denver address tells us almost nothing on its own. What matters is when the neighbourhood was built and whether anyone has been pruning since.

Cherry Creek and the established core

Early-twentieth-century bungalows with street trees to match, and a redevelopment wave from the 1980s onward that has been replacing single-family homes with townhouses and condos. That combination is the hard one: hundred-year-old trees standing next to scrape-off construction, with root zones cut by foundations and utility trenches. Work here is preservation, root-zone protection and honest structural assessment of trees that have already been through a lot.

Green Valley Ranch and the northeast

Annexed into Denver in 1973 and built out from the early 1980s, past 35,000 residents by 2015 with homes still going up. It is on the city’s own low-canopy focus list, which is why Denver Digs Trees sells trees there at $15 instead of $50. The job here is the opposite of Cherry Creek: young stock, thin shade, and formative pruning that decides what these trees become in thirty years.

The permit that catches people out

Two Denver rules matter before anyone starts work on your property, and both of them are about the company, not about you.

DRMC 57-71: “It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in the business of, or receive compensation for, planting, cutting, trimming, pruning, or removing trees shrubs or vines without first procuring a license.” Under 57-75, applicants are tested by the city forester.

DRMC 57-20(a) is the one that surprises people: “It shall be unlawful to plant trees on, perform trunk injections of pesticides into trees on, or remove trees from, the public right-of-way or other public place without a permit issued by the city forester.” The ash between your sidewalk and the kerb is very often a right-of-way tree, and treating it is a permitted act.

  • Ask which side of the sidewalk the tree is on before you agree to treat it
  • Ask the company for its Denver licence number and check it against the city’s list
  • Ask whether a right-of-way permit is needed and who is pulling it
  • Get the answer in writing, on the quote, not in a text message
GET MY FREE ARBORIST ASSESSMENT CALL AN ARBORIST: 303-366-3020

Five promises, in writing, on every job

Nearly every complaint people have about tree companies comes down to the same thing: something happened that the homeowner never agreed to. These five exist so that cannot happen here.

  • Know Before We CutA certified arborist walks your property and explains what is wrong before a saw comes off the truck.
  • Know Before You PayYou get a written quote. The number you approve is the number you pay.
  • No Unauthorized ExtrasNothing gets cut, treated or hauled that is not on the quote you approved.
  • Your Property Comes FirstRigging and drop zones planned around your roof, fence and beds — not around our schedule.
  • Cleanup Is Part of the JobChips hauled, limbs gone, lawn raked. It is not a line item and it is not extra.
GET MY FREE ARBORIST ASSESSMENT CALL AN ARBORIST: 303-366-3020

Shade is not distributed evenly in this city

Globeville sits at roughly 5% tree canopy, which local reporting has described as seven to eight times less than wealthier neighbourhoods across town. Elyria-Swansea, Montbello, Westwood, Sun Valley and more than twenty other neighbourhoods appear on Denver’s low-canopy focus list.

That is not an abstraction in July. Canopy is the difference between a street you can walk down in the afternoon and one you cannot, and it is the single cheapest cooling infrastructure a city owns.

If you live in one of those neighbourhoods, Denver Digs Trees sells trees at $15 rather than $50 and runs free “Treeships” for households with financial constraints. We will tell you if that programme is the better answer than anything we would charge you for. Getting a tree in the ground beats getting a quote from us.

What Denver metro customers wrote

★★★★★

“The entire crew did a great job removing an enormous elm tree that was encroaching our house. Special shout out to Ben who spent his 65th birthday in the lofty branches of the beast!”

— Cynthia O. · Verified Google Review

★★★★★

“I learned more about tree care talking to him for 5 minutes than I had my entire life. A proposal was in my inbox in minutes…”

— Michael D. · Verified Google Review

★★★★★

“Jeff also explained that those little sucker branches actually just take water and don’t do anything. So with the drought, we really feel like we have prevented some damage to our trees as well as over using water for nothing.”

— Cynthia N. · Verified Google Review

4.8 stars from 191 Google reviews — the same number on every page of this site.

Read all 191 on Google →

Denver tree service questions

How many ash trees does Denver have, and are they all going to die?

About 330,000 — roughly one in six trees in the city — and no, not all of them, because ash can be protected with trunk injection. Roughly 27,000 sit in the public right-of-way and the rest are on private property. An untreated infested ash does not recover; a healthy ash on a treatment programme generally does. The decision point is how much canopy has already been lost.

Do I need a permit to treat or remove a tree in Denver?

For a tree in the public right-of-way, yes. DRMC 57-20 makes it unlawful to trunk-inject or remove a right-of-way tree without a permit from the city forester. The strip between the sidewalk and the kerb is very often right-of-way rather than your property, even though you mow it. Before you agree to treatment on a street tree, establish which side of the line it is on and who is pulling the permit.

Does a tree company need a licence in Denver?

Yes. DRMC 57-71 makes it unlawful to trim, prune or remove trees for compensation in Denver without a licence from the Department of Excise and Licenses. Section 57-75 goes further and requires applicants to be tested by the city forester. Ask any company for its licence, ours included, and do not accept a business card as an answer.

When did emerald ash borer reach Denver?

It was confirmed on 17 June 2025 by Colorado State University entomologists working with Denver’s Office of the City Forester. Denver was not the first. Boulder saw it in 2013, Arvada in 2021, Littleton in 2023 and Lakewood in 2024. The pattern across those cities is consistent: the trees that were treated early are still standing.

A spring snowstorm dropped a limb on my property. Who is responsible?

In Denver, the property owner is responsible for clearing trees that fell on their own property or on the public right-of-way next to it. After the 6 May 2026 storm the city logged 150 downed-tree reports before morning, and said owners would be billed if the city had to clear material blocking a road. We are a Monday-to-Friday, 8-to-5 company with no after-hours dispatch. Storm-damage work is still real work, and it is triaged by risk when you call.

Can I water my trees under Denver Water’s restrictions?

Yes — trees and shrubs can be hand-watered or drip-irrigated any day, just not between 10 AM and 6 PM. Denver Water is in a Stage 1 drought with drought pricing running through 30 April 2027, and lawn watering and spray irrigation stop at the end of September. The tree carve-out is the most useful thing in that rulebook and most people never read far enough to find it.

Every service we bring to Denver

One ISA Certified Arborist behind all six, and one written quote if you need more than one of them.

Tree Removal · Tree Trimming & Pruning · Stump Grinding · Pest & Disease Control · Tree Injections · Lawn Fertilization & Weed Control

We also work in

Aurora · Centennial · Parker · Castle Rock · Highlands Ranch · Englewood · Littleton · Greenwood Village

See every community we cover →

Find out which of your trees is an ash before somebody sells you a removal

The identification, the assessment and the written quote are free. If the honest answer is that your tree is a honeylocust and it is fine, that is what you will be told.

GET MY FREE ARBORIST ASSESSMENT CALL AN ARBORIST: 303-366-3020

312 Norfolk St, Unit A, Aurora, CO 80011 · Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM · Serving Denver and the Denver metro since 2003