Luis the Arborist

About Luis the Arborist

Laguna Niguel mornings usually open under the marine layer, gray and cool across the ridges, and the trees here -- coast live oak, sycamore, pepper, pine -- do much of their growing in that damp. Luis the Arborist reads them for it: the thinning crown, deadwood in the interior, a root flare buried under too much mulch, the difference between a tree that is stressed and a tree that is done. Care and pruning come first, cutting for the tree's own structure rather than for convenience, with removal held back for the ones that cannot be brought around. It fits this town of canyons and hillsides, where a well-kept oak holds a slope together and shades a whole backyard by afternoon, once the gray burns off toward the water. A tree that stays healthy is the quietest kind of good result.