Chip Truck Chips (CTC) are the wood chips that come from a chip truck of a conscientious tree company (not just any dump truck). We want to help homeowners understand why truck chips are so great for your landscape and garden projects. Shredded bark mulch is a byproduct of the lumber industry, which is ground up and stockpiled and then distributed to landscape maintenance and supply companies. Chip Truck Chips are superior to shredded bark if you consider the effect on your soil and plants, the environmental impact, and more. At Heartwood we have set up a system to deliver free (yup, free!) tr ..read more

Planting a tree should be an easy decision. Ask yourself a few key questions will help you to decide what tree to plant and where to plant it. #1 Choosing the Tree Planting Location Where do I want a tree? Trees can help with myriad landscape goals for the average American backyard. For example, trees can: provide shade for a structure or play area create privacy protect your yard from prevailing winds, tie together a planting act as a visual centerpiece in your landscape provide seasonal color (spring blossoms, summer fruit, fall foliage) create interesting winter structure A ..read more

Pruning and removing trees naturally results in a lot of wood scrap. Since 2012, Heartwood has strived to save every usable piece of wood possible. Our efforts started with saving dead branches from oaks to burn in the wood stove, and we are now salvaging logs on most medium to large trees we remove. This winter we took the next step and bought logs salvaged from oak savanna restoration projects in the UW-Arboretum.       We teamed up with Jon Roach from Living Wood Creations to purchase this stack of pine, oak, cherry, and walnut from the UW Arboretum in Dec 2021 ..read more

 What are Your Tree Planting Goals? When you a buy a tree to have planted in your yard what are the motivations for making that purchase?  Are you looking for a “statement tree” right out of the box?  Are you looking for a tree that future generations can hang a tree swing in?  Are you trying to create shade on the south side of your house or patio? Being on both the removal and planting side of the tree equation affords Heartwood arborists lots of time to think about the long-term motivations for planting trees.  Personally, my favorite planting is one that will shade ..read more

  Being a vocal anti-lawn person, I’m completely biased on the topics of leaf raking, leaf composting, and yard waste management. I feel our yards need fewer synthetic inputs and a lot more native inputs, in the form of leaf litter.  A city parkscape with loads of free fertilizer covering its grass. Beautiful! Why Do People Rake Leaves? When you don’t know how to do something, what is the first thing you do?  Well, I’m a DIY type of person (to a fault), so I go to my phone and thumb in “how to _____”. Google knows. If you ask the internet “Why do we rake leaves?” the predominan ..read more

An Uncommon Oak with Telltale Leaves As its name implies, the swamp white oak is a lowland tree, often found in areas subject to periodic flooding, and on the edges of swamps and poorly drained meadows. Unlike white oaks (Q. alba) and burr oaks (Q. macrocarpa), which occur in large stands in the forests and oak savannahs of the Midwest, swamp white oaks are usually found growing singly amongst forests dominated by other species. They are thus relatively rare, encountered much less often than their oaken brethren. Although less common, swamp white oaks are easy to spot, even for novices. The La ..read more

A Tree With Many Aliases Carpinus caroliniana goes by many names: musclewood, American hornbeam, water beech, blue beech, and ironwood (not to be confused with a different ironwood that we also offer). When you’re strolling through Wisconsin woodlands and you come upon this tree, the name most likely to come to mind is “musclewood.” because the smooth, ridged trunk resembles the musculature of a sinewy action movie hero. Here at Heartwood, we usually use “musclewood” as it avoids the confusion other names can cause. “Blue beech,” for example, is a misleading name, since this tree is not a beec ..read more

In summer 2019, Madison's Urban Forestry Task Force recommended doubling our city canopy as a primary method of fighting climate change and maintaining quality of life. The New York Times reported a new study suggests planting trees and restoring forests worldwide could help reverse global warming. Clearly, our communities and our planet could benefit from more trees. We want to provide you with options to support the effort. Urban Tree Alliance We also have been volunteering with the Urban Tree Alliance and Jeremy Kane to plant trees here in Madison, mainly at schools.  We love supporting the ..read more