Kaustubh Deo | Source | President / Owner / CEO / General Manager at Blooma Tree Experts

Bob Vila (February 2024): For example, gaining employment with a tree care company before investing in becoming a certified arborist can allow budding landscapers to receive valuable on-the-job training. Kaustubh Deo, president of Blooma Tree Experts, a tree service company based in Seattle, Washington, reminds potential hires to climb their way up, literally. “The ideal [way to gain experience] is to go work as a groundworker for a company that has a tree pruning crew,” Deo explains. “While the arborists and climbers are at work, actually in the trees and pruning the limbs, you’re the person on the ground dragging these branches to the chipper and chipping them up. But importantly, you’ll learn how arborists prune trees, which is related to tree biology. It’s actually a very natural apprenticeship type role to go from this, a groundworker, to eventually becoming a climber and then eventually from there a certified arborist.”

Bob Vila (March 2024): We also spoke to Kaustubh Deo, president of Blooma Tree Experts, a tree care company based in Seattle, Washington, featuring International Society of Arboriculture (ISA)–certified arborists with over 17 years of experience. He says that once you’ve purchased a chipper, “Don’t forget to follow the maintenance instructions in the guides. Make sure you keep the chipper knives sharp and rotate them.” He also adds this expert tip: “Rental shops that rent out chippers should be able to sharpen chipper knives for you.”

Kaustubh Deo recently wrote a partnered post with Windermere Real Estate Mercer Island to provide homeowners with tips on how to prep their trees before listing their home for sale.

Selected quotes include:
- You’ve seen it before—a home shrouded in darkness due to a row of massive trees towering over one side. This shadow, particularly if on the south or west sides of the home, can make the home feel darker and less welcoming. This can be easily resolved without major pruning. An experienced, qualified arborist can complete selective pruning, which means they look for the ideal branches to take out to promote light passing through. They’ll focus on dead, dying, and crossing branches that are either safety risks or don’t serve much purpose. This doesn’t require extensive pruning, which helps manage the cost down, but still promotes the overall feel of your home, especially given Seattle’s overcast and low-light climate.

- If your front yard is more shrubs and bushes, a light application of fertilizer, water, and other organic soil amendments can promote your plants’ vigor, flowering intensity, and color. You’re basically giving your shrubs a little extra food to give them that boost of energy going into home listing season. Whether it’s flowering bushes showing off stunning colors, or just bright greens on foliage, it all helps paint the scene. The best part is that it doesn’t take much to help the flowers and leaves show vigor—a tree and plant healthcare application like this should cost less than $200. Combine this with some light pruning for deadwood removal to help de-clutter the inside of the bushes. Your homebuyer should understand how bright and pretty the front yard landscape can look after a long, dreary Seattle winter. Further, a little DIY tip—as flowers die on the stem, you can manually remove them yourself (aka “deadheading”). The plant wants to move on from flowers into seeds. If you interrupt that sequence, the plant will want to keep pushing out more flowers.