Grinding a bradford pear stump is not like grinding anything else
Planted by the thousand across nineties subdivisions, and now splitting apart on schedule across all of them.
Free quotes, usually the same day. Tell us what you are looking at and we pass it straight to a local crew.
Pyrus calleryana
Bradford pear was the builder-default ornamental in Georgia subdivisions built between roughly 1990 and 2005, which describes most of Bradshaw Farm, Brookshire and a dozen other Woodstock neighborhoods. The trees have a structural flaw: the branches all emerge from nearly the same point, and past about twenty years they split in storms.
Georgia has been actively discouraging them for years because they escape into woodland and crowd out natives. Several states now run buy-back programs. If yours has split, it is not worth saving.
The grinding itself is easy. These are small stumps, usually well under eighteen inches, and the wood is soft. The catch is the minimum fee: a single Bradford pear stump will cost you the crew’s one hundred to two hundred dollar callout almost regardless of size.
Which is the argument for waiting until you have two. If your neighborhood was built in the nineties, you almost certainly do.
What it costs
Species changes the time on site more than the price list does. The local market range, and what moves a quote, is on the Woodstock stump grinding cost guide.
How the visit itself goes, from the phone call to raking the chips back into the hole, is on the stump grinding in Woodstock, GA page.
Other trees we get asked about
Stump services
Common questions
Can I just leave the stump and mow over it?
You can, and it will fight you. Callery pear resprouts hard from the stump and the root collar, which is exactly how it escapes into woodland in the first place. Grinding below the root collar is what stops it. Mowing the shoots just keeps them coming.
Do the roots keep growing after grinding?
For most species no, the roots simply decompose underground over a few years. Sweetgum and water oak are the Georgia exceptions, since both can keep sending up suckers from surviving surface roots. If your tree was either, ask about root chasing in the same visit.
Do I need a permit to grind a stump in Woodstock?
Grinding an existing stump on your own property does not require a permit. Removing a living tree can, depending on size, location and whether it is in a protected buffer, so check with the City of Woodstock before taking down a standing tree.
Can I plant grass or a new tree where the stump was?
Grass, yes. Fill the void with topsoil rather than the chips, since decomposing wood robs nitrogen from new grass. Planting a new tree in the same hole needs full removal rather than grinding, because the old root mass is still in the way.
Free quotes, usually the same day. Tell us what you are looking at and we pass it straight to a local crew.