Emergency Tree Service in Madison, NJ

The Rose City kept its canopy — and a borough-run grid feels every tree that comes down.

Madison is unusually green for a borough of sixteen thousand, and it has worked at it. The historic Bottle Hill core is lined with mature oaks and maples standing over Colonial, Federal, Greek Revival and Victorian houses that were here long before the trees reached full size. Drew University's wooded campus — the reason it has been called the University in the Forest since William Gibbons named his estate The Forest in 1832 — holds a preserve of intact woodland and glacial ponds right inside the borough limits.

That canopy is the reason people move here and the reason storm nights get expensive. Wet nor'easter snow and summer downburst wind load long oak limbs over slate and cedar roofs, and Madison's older trees are rooted in soil that has been built around, trenched, and compacted for a century. When one lets go, it usually finds a roof, a car, or a service drop.

Madison is also one of the few New Jersey towns that runs its own electric utility. The Madison Electric Department has kept the lights on here for more than a hundred years, and it maintains its right-of-way aggressively — which means the trees that take this town's power out are usually the ones standing just outside it, on private property, where nobody has been trimming.