Woodpecker Certified Arborist

Brian and Heather have taken care of my citrus/​avocado trees for 10+ years — planting new ones, annual pruning, general advice on various conditions and this year moving a blood orange tree. I doubt I would have had as much success with my trees without their help!

Woodpecker Certified Arborist is a family owned business that has been established for over 20 years. I found Brian & Heather McGovern via my neighborhood web page and also checked out his reviews on Unilocal.I needed one Juniper tree cut down, stump grinded and one apricot stump grinded.
Before doing any work, its good to know what is below or near the trees underground, so call 811 on your phone or go to
at least 4 days before you dig, this is a free of charge service provided by the city. Just spray paint the trees or stumps you want to have grinded or removed in white color (referred to as the premarked excavation area) to aid the utility service workers when they come out to inspect the area.
With just one phone call, all the utilities: PG&E electrical, gas, water pipes, AT&T/ Comcast fiber optic cable, street lighting or sewer pipe workers will come out to inspect the area. As you don’t want to be surprised with another bill. The workers will normally be out in 48 – 72 hours. They will spray paint the company and if it is OK to dig with the following colors: red-​electric, orange — phone/​fiber optic cable, blue — water, green-​sewer/​drain, yellow-​gas, purple-​reclaimed water.
While Brian was not the cheapest, he was thorough, skilled, knowledgeable, licensed and experienced. Brian works with his wife Heather and they have their own truck and grinding machine. The team are arborists and not just contract handymen who rent tools from Home Depot. They had the juniper tree cut down quickly which they mulched and hauled away. They took just over 3.5 hours to grind stumps, they did not go down 8−10″ inches as stated.
When the concrete contractor moved the dirt and dug down 6″ you could still see the stumps and roots. Brian had just left the stumps and covered with the wood chip. So, the concrete contractor took a circular saw and pick axe and had to removed the remaining stump and poured some oil on the remaining piece so they would not grow again.
Brian does leave the ground up chips, he says by law they have to fill in the hole and leave them behind. I will have the concrete contractor haul these away, although you could use it for compost I suppose.
He has his D49 Tree Service, License #770 742 for his trade, 3 stars

Brian McGovern is very knowledgeable, definitely understand trees, even thinks like trees. Used him on a recommendation from a friend for my Japanese Maple, did a great job for both appearance and needs of the tree; explained to me a lot about what he was doing and why.

I’ve been using Woodpecker for many years to prune my trees and greatly value Brian’s expert knowledge and skills. He’s been reducing, thinning and shaping two large trees and pruning several others with the long term health and welfare of the trees in mind. He found a structural problem with one of my large trees and fixed it. At some point it could have split off a very large section of the tree. What I also greatly appreciate is the excellent job of clean-​up that Brian and Heather finish off with, even after a very long day working on the trees.

Brian McGovern did a great job on the trees in our yard. He pruned and shaped our fruit trees, and took down some oppressive limbs off the shade trees. He was very efficient and tidy. He has plenty of experience and knowledge and in general a great guy to talk to about any tree related subject.