Land Clearing in Grand Rapids, MI

Clear the right amount, which is less than you think

Almost nobody regrets keeping trees and a lot of people regret clearing them. A mature oak within sight of the house is worth real money on the eventual sale and cannot be bought back at any price. The way to keep them is to decide the building envelope first, clear that, and protect what is outside it properly rather than leaving it to the excavator's judgement on the day.

Protection means fencing at a real radius, not tape round the trunk. Compaction inside the root zone and fill over the root flare are what actually kill trees on building sites, and both happen after the clearing crew has gone.

Mulch it or haul it, and what that does to the price

Forestry mulching grinds standing brush and small trees in place and leaves the material as a mat on the ground. It is fast, it costs less because nothing is trucked, and the mat suppresses regrowth and holds soil on a slope. It does not deal with stumps of any size and it leaves organic material where you may want engineered fill.

Conventional clearing pushes, piles and hauls. It costs more, it is the right answer where you need a clean pad, and disposal is a real line on the bid rather than a rounding error. We show it either way rather than burying it.

The township question, which genuinely changes the job

Inside the City of Grand Rapids, clearing on private land is largely a matter between you and your site plan. Outside it, the townships regulate through zoning and the tests are different in each one.

Cascade Charter Township has a zoning ordinance rewrite in progress that adds an explicit tree removal permit and would require replacement where a non-residential parcel, or a residential parcel over three acres, removes more than twenty-five percent of its trees in a year, with exemptions for invasive species and land under a qualified forest management programme. Ada Township regulates tree removal chiefly through land division and site plan review rather than through a blanket permit, and its zoning ordinance requires natural vegetation and transition zones along watercourses to be shown on plans, which bites hard on anything fronting the Thornapple River. East Grand Rapids controls street trees through its own Chapter 32.

We are not your zoning consultant and you should confirm with the township, but we will tell you what we know before you sign, which is not universal in this trade.

Poison ivy, and the thing people underestimate

West Michigan brush is full of it, and a mulcher turns poison ivy into airborne urushiol. Anyone downwind of that job, including you, gets a reaction that can be considerably worse than touching the plant. Burning it is worse again and can put people in hospital. We treat and remove it as a separate operation ahead of clearing where there is any quantity, which is covered on the brush and poison ivy page.