Arborist and Horticulturist for the Coachella Valley

We treat disease and insect infested trees. Experienced Arborists & Horticulturists.

Whether you need help maintaining your trees for optimal health or disease diagnosis, you will be taken care of by our complete range of tree care services.

What an arborist actually does

An arborist works out what is happening to a tree and what should be done about it. That sounds straightforward until you are standing under a forty year old palm with two people telling you two different things and one of them holding a quote. Most of our calls arrive at exactly that moment. Somebody has looked at the tree, given an opinion and named a price, and the owner has no way to judge whether the opinion is worth the money.

A horticulturist covers the other half of the problem, which is the ground the tree is living in. Out here the two are hard to separate, because a large share of what looks like disease turns out to be the soil, the irrigation or last summer's pruning. Toni DiBernardo studied horticulture and entomology at Pierce College and California State University and has run this business since 1995. Her background and the memberships behind it are on the tree doctor page.

An arborist and a tree service are not the same thing

A tree service sells work. An arborist sells an answer, and often the answer is that less work is needed than somebody has told you. That difference is the whole reason to call one.

It matters most when a tree has been condemned. A removal quote is a large number and it almost never arrives with any evidence attached. A tree health assessment gives you that evidence, for a fraction of what the removal costs, and it either confirms the problem or saves you the tree. Sorting a real hazard from a sales pitch is the everyday work of an arborist.

It runs the other way too. Some root diseases have no cure and some structural failures cannot be pruned out. We say so when that is the case. A firm that never recommends removal is as unreliable as one that always does.

What our arborists diagnose and treat

Disease and insects

Sticky leaves and black sooty mold mean a sap feeder, and telling whitefly from scale from aphids decides the response. It is rarely a broad spray, because that usually makes the following season worse by killing the natural predators along with the pest. Borers follow damaged bark rather than causing it, so the useful question is what damaged the bark. Some problems have no cure at all, like oleander leaf scorch, and knowing which ones those are saves a great deal of money.

Palms

Palms fail differently from broadleaf trees and most palm advice online was written for Florida. A thinning crown, one sided frond death, a trunk that narrows near the top and a spear that pulls out easily all mean different things, and one of them is urgent. Half the palm diseases people read about do not occur in California at all, and telling the few that do from the many that do not is most of a palm tree diagnosis.

Soil, water and nutrients

Alkaline soil locks up iron, manganese and zinc even when they are sitting right there in the ground. A tree can be starving in soil a lab calls adequate, which is why nutrient work here is about correcting availability rather than simply feeding more. Irrigation is the other half of it. A schedule that suits a lawn starves a tree, and the canopy shows it two seasons later, long after anybody would connect the two.

Preventative checks

Most of what kills trees out here is slow and visible well before it turns fatal. Regular checks catch those problems while they are still cheap to fix. It is the least dramatic thing an arborist does and the one that saves the most trees.

How a visit works

When it comes to looking out for your trees, All Seasons Tree Specialists have a tried and true method. Our system keeps our customers in the know about our treatment plans and pricing from the beginning. We have a 5-step plan to diagnose and treat your trees.

Answer Your Call
Come Out to Your Property
Diagnose & Quote
Treatment
Happy & Healthy Trees

Where our arborists work in the Coachella Valley

Our office is on Highway 111 in La Quinta and we cover the valley end to end, for homes and commercial properties alike. That is a small area on a map and a wide one in practice. A date palm in Indio, a ficus hedge in Rancho Mirage and a citrus tree in a Palm Springs back garden are three different jobs, and the advice that suits one of them will waste your money on the other two.

Each town below has its own page, because what goes wrong is not the same end to end. The Cove in La Quinta drains before a tree can drink, Cathedral City takes the wind off the San Gorgonio Pass, and Thermal sits at the low end where the salt collects.

Everything east of Cabazon, which is every property on that list, is the area California's date palm quarantine exists to protect. It names saws and knives alongside the trees themselves, because tools are how that disease actually moves between palms. It is worth knowing before you let any crew start work.

We also keep a second office on Agoura Road in Westlake Village, covering Calabasas and the Conejo Valley.

When to call an arborist

Call quickly for a fresh lean with soil lifting on one side, a large cracked limb over something you would mind it landing on, a trunk that sounds hollow, or a palm whose central spear pulls out.

Call at a normal pace for a canopy that thins a little more each year, branches dying one at a time, leaves that are sticky or blackened, or a quote you would like looked at before you sign it. An arborist visit costs a small fraction of a mature tree.

When it comes to your trees, you deserve the best.