In Cambridge, the trees are protected — and so is the house they lean over.

Cambridge grows one of the densest, most cherished urban canopies in New England. The elms and oaks of Harvard Yard, the big street maples of Mid-Cambridge, and the shade trees lining the residential blocks off Massachusetts Avenue all crowd tightly against triple-deckers, brick rowhouses, and narrow one-way streets where there's barely room to swing a saw, let alone drop a limb.

Coastal weather works on that canopy hard. Nor'easters push wet snow in off the bay and load the wide-crowned maples; gusts funnel along the Charles River corridor through Cambridgeport and Riverside; and saturated urban soil around Fresh Pond and the squares loosens root plates until an old tree simply leans over. The National Weather Service Boston/Norton (BOX) office tracks the wind and winter events that bring them down.

Cambridge also has one of the strongest tree-protection ordinances in the state, so removals here demand care and paperwork. Our crews work the city around the clock — Kendall to Porter, Agassiz to North Cambridge — and handle both the rigging and the regulations.