How we research and review tree-care guidance.

Because most of what is published here affects a decision with real consequences and real money attached — whether a tree is urgent, whether a permit applies, whether wood can be moved. A page that gets one of those wrong is worse than no page. Saying how the content is researched, reviewed and corrected is what makes it checkable rather than asked to be trusted.

Against a first-party source, and the source is linked on the page. Municipal requirements come from the municipality, invasive-species guidance from Vermont Invasives, excavation notification from Dig Safe, safety standards from OSHA. Sources are selected for the subject of each page rather than a standard list pasted onto everything, which is why the list differs page to page.

Each guide shows when its sources were last reviewed. The areas that move fastest are ash-material movement and municipal requirements, and both are explicitly flagged as things to confirm at the point of your decision rather than relied on from a page. Rules change without telling us, and pretending otherwise would be the failure this policy exists to prevent.

Because the accountability sits with the publisher and the sources rather than with a person. Content here is published by the organisation, checked against linked first-party sources, and dated. A fabricated byline on a page whose real authority is the source it cites would add nothing except a claim we could not support.

For drafting, organising and quality checks. What their output is never treated as is evidence — not evidence of local conditions, not of credentials, not of completed work. A page is kept only when it serves a distinct decision, passes the duplication and route checks, and keeps its safety limits and source links intact. That is a process constraint rather than a disclaimer.

A page has to own a question that someone actually asks, and pages that differ only by a swapped town, service or company name are consolidated rather than published. That is checked mechanically: every page's text is compared against every other page's across the whole site, and near-duplicates are a build failure rather than a matter of judgement.

Company names are used for identification only. We link to the company's own current pages, date the review, distinguish published facts from our own guidance, and display a non-affiliation statement. We do not copy reviews or branding, invent weaknesses, imply endorsement, or present another company's facts as current when they may not be.

Anything a page cannot know: whether a specific tree is safe, what internal decay is present, what a particular parcel's permit position is, and what the work should cost. A page can describe how those decisions are made and what evidence they turn on. It cannot make them, and content that implies otherwise is the failure mode this standard is written against.

Report the page and the specific statement through the contact form. A material correction changes both the page and its review date — the date is not decorative, and leaving it unchanged after a substantive edit would misrepresent how current the page is. Corrections are treated as defect reports rather than feedback.

Only with the original source identified next to the number, and rarely. A statistic without a traceable source is an assertion, and an assertion about tree failure rates or costs is exactly the kind of thing a reader might act on. Where a range or a figure would help but cannot be sourced, the page says what determines it instead.

No, and saying so is part of the standard. Content is researched against primary sources, checked for internal consistency and dated. Where a question needs professional judgement about a specific tree or a specific parcel, the page says so and points at the qualified person or the issuing authority rather than answering it.

If it stopped serving a distinct decision, if it duplicated another page's substance, if a claim on it could not be re-sourced, or if it named a company in a way that asserted something we could not stand behind. Removing a page is cheaper than defending one, and a site that never removes anything is not applying a standard.