How to choose a tree surgeon in France: the checks to make before you sign the quote

Choosing a tree surgeon does not take expertise in arboriculture or knowledge of species. It takes about ten simple checks, all possible from your sofa or during a first call, and none of them depends on price. Most bad pruning experiences do not come from a badly cut tree: they come from a quote nobody read, an insurance certificate nobody asked for, or a door-to-door canvasser who never picked up the phone again.

1. 1The business exists: its SIRET number is valid and its registered activity fits tree work.
2. 2It has an address, a landline or mobile number that answers, and a website or listing you can cross-check.
3. 3On simple request, it gives you a current professional liability insurance certificate.
4. 4It comes to look at the tree before quoting, except for very simple work that photos can describe.
5. 5The quote is written, dated, signed, and details tree by tree what will be cut.
6. 6The quote says what happens to the branches: removal, chipping on site, or left with you.
7. 7The price is consistent with other quotes, and any gap is explained by a difference in service, not by a mystery.
8. 8The pruning method is stated: cuts at the branch collar, thinning or reduction, never a topping decided in advance.
9. 9Equipment and site safety are described: helmet, harness, cordoning-off, two people when needed.
10. 10Constraints are spotted: power lines, neighbour, protected tree, nests, time of year.
11. 11No excessive deposit is demanded, no cash-only payment imposed, no urgency invented.
12. 12At the end of the visit you know who will actually work on your site.

Tree pruning is work at height, with a chainsaw, above roofs, cars and sometimes passers-by. It is also work on a living thing: a badly placed cut cannot be undone, and a mutilated tree takes years to recover, when it does. The trade therefore needs two distinct skills: mastery of access and safety, and knowledge of how a tree heals.

The arborist-pruner specialisation certificate

There is a reference course, the “Arboriste élagueur” specialisation certificate, taken over one year in work-study and listed in the national register of professional certifications. It is the most solid benchmark when you look for someone trained in climbing, pruning techniques and safety at height. But, to our knowledge, no title is required by law to practise tree pruning: an experienced craftsperson without a diploma can be excellent, and a graduate can work badly.

What a title does not tell you

• It does not tell you whether the business is insured today: only the insurance certificate proves that.
• It does not tell you whether the person who comes to your home is the one who earned it: in a firm with several workers, ask who actually climbs your tree.
• It says nothing about how they price, remove waste or clean up.
• It does not replace previous customers’ opinions: photos of real jobs and verifiable reviews are worth more than a diploma displayed on a website.

In practice, simply ask: “How did you learn the trade, and who will be in the tree at my place?” The answer is usually telling, and someone who has worked for years can talk about it without notes. Be wary of vague titles (“arboricultural expert”, “plant engineer”) that point to no specific diploma, or of certifications quoted without being able to say where they were taken.

Before asking for a felling quote, the tree’s status in the PLU is checked at the town hall: Felling a tree: the rules to know before the quote.

This is the quickest check and the most neglected. It takes two minutes, it is free, and it rules out a good share of bad surprises: the canvasser who disappears, the false trade name and the business struck off a year ago.

1. 1Ask for the SIRET number, or read it on the quote. It has fourteen digits.
2. 2Enter it on the government business directory (annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr), which draws on the official registers: you see the name, address, creation date, legal form and whether the business is still active.
3. 3Check that the declared activity is consistent: a landscaping or forestry-work code fits tree pruning, a code unrelated to tree work deserves a question.
4. 4Call the quote’s phone number again another day: a number that never answers is not a good sign.
5. 5Read the reviews, then open one or two: a detailed review describing a specific job is worth more than ten stars with no comment.

A sole trader, a micro-business and a company are all legitimate forms. A business without VAT, whose quotes say “TVA non applicable, article 293 B du CGI”, is not suspect: it is the normal mention for a craftsperson under the VAT exemption threshold. What should raise an alarm is a missing identity: no name, no SIRET, an address that leads nowhere, a trade name that changes from one message to the next.

A tree falling on a roof, a branch going through a car windscreen, a tile broken by a badly held cut: these are not rare accidents. They happen, even to competent professionals. The question is therefore not whether they can happen, but who pays when they do. That is the role of professional liability insurance, commonly called “RC pro” in France.

What a certificate should contain

• The insured’s name, identical to the one on the quote, and their SIRET number.
• The validity period: last year’s certificate proves nothing for today.
• The activity covered: tree pruning, felling, grounds maintenance. A certificate covering only the sale of equipment does not cover your tree.
• The amount of cover and the excess: both are stated, and you can ask what they cover in case of damage to a third party.
• The insurer’s name, whom you can call to confirm the policy exists.

Ten-year building warranty (garantie décennale), often quoted in construction work, does not apply to tree pruning: it protects a building work. A tree surgeon who presents it as their main cover is answering a different question from yours. What you are looking for is liability cover for damage to property and people during the job.

This principle applies to every business, ours included: never start work without having seen the certificate, whatever impression the person in front of you makes. A professional who hands it over without discussion is doing you a favour, and knows it.

You do not need to know how to climb on a rope to spot a well-run site. A few things are visible from afar, and they tell you about the rigour of the whole.

• A helmet, gloves, ankle-protecting boots, protective trousers: basic equipment is worn, not left in the van.
• A harness and a well-thought access method: rope, platform or a well-secured ladder. A tree surgeon who climbs a living tree wearing spikes damages the bark: spikes are reserved for trees being felled.
• A marked-off drop zone: tape, cones or barriers, with neighbours and children kept away.
• Someone on the ground when the tree is tall or the area underneath delicate. Lone work at height is bad practice, and when unavoidable it must be justified and prepared.
• Clean, maintained equipment: a sharp chain, fuel stored properly, a first-aid kit within reach.

Power lines and networks

When a tree comes close to an overhead line, the job changes nature. Work near networks follows a prior declaration procedure, carried out on the official networks and pipelines portal (reseaux-et-canalisations.gouv.fr), and safety distances that only the network operator can confirm. A serious tree surgeon knows this, mentions it spontaneously on the quote and never tries to squeeze between the wires to save half a day.

Lines, nests, protected trees and the fire season: everything that frames a job before the first cut is set out in our article When to prune a tree in France: the real calendar, species by species.

The quote is the document that protects you, and the one read the least. It fixes what will be done, for what price, with what precautions. A one-line quote (“pruning: €450”) protects you from nothing: in case of dispute you cannot prove what was agreed, and neither can the business. A good quote is longer than you would think.

A legal point that surprises: a quote signed at your home, after a professional has travelled to see you, falls in French consumer law under the contract concluded away from business premises. In most cases you then have a fourteen-day withdrawal period, and the professional may in principle not take payment before seven days (articles L. 221-18 and L. 221-10 of the Consumer Code). Exceptions exist, notably for an urgent job you expressly request. In every case the quote must mention this right; its absence is a warning sign.

Comparing three quotes without being misled

Asking for several quotes is good practice, provided you compare like with like. Put them side by side and tick, for each, the eight headings of the table. A cheaper quote that states neither waste removal nor method is not cheaper: it is incomplete. Call the business back and ask for what is missing. The answer often settles it between a vague quote and one that is simply short.

Our quote is written, free, and details what is cut, the method and the fate of the waste. How the service runs is explained on our page Tree pruning in Lapalud and northern Vaucluse.

Tree-pruning scams almost always follow the same script: a canvassing visit, a price announced by word of mouth, a staged emergency, a deposit demanded straight away. The table below sums them up, with the right reaction. None of these signs proves bad faith on its own, but two or three together are enough to end the conversation.

You do not need to be an arborist to recognise careful work. A few simple principles, applied by any trained professional, can be seen on the tree once the job is finished.

• Clean cuts at the branch collar: the small swelling at the base of a branch, where healing starts. No stubs, those stumps that rot and never heal.
• A silhouette that is respected: the tree keeps its natural shape, with a lightened crown, not a standing stump.
• A reasonable quantity: we avoid removing more than about a quarter to a third of the foliage in a single season, because the tree needs its leaves to produce the energy that closes its wounds.
• Deadwood, broken or rubbing branches removed first: that is what lowers the risk, more than the volume removed.
• No “healing” product smeared on the wounds: the practice is now discouraged by most arborists, who prefer a clean cut and let the tree close itself.

One exception deserves to be known, because it wrongly looks like topping: pollarding, long practised on certain avenue and courtyard trees, notably in Provence. It consists of cutting the branches back every year or two onto pruning heads, from which new shoots grow. It only applies to a tree managed that way since young, and it is decided with the tree, not against it. On an adult tree never pruned that way, it is mutilation.

The right time for a cut changes with the species, the climate and the presence of nests. We set it out in our calendar The pruning calendar, species by species.

A five-minute first call is enough to sort. Prepare two or three photos of the tree, taken from afar and up close, with a size reference (a door, a car), and note the constraints you know about: a line, a party wall, a narrow access.

1. 1“Can you give me your SIRET and your insurance certificate?”
2. 2“Who will work at my place, and how many people will be there?”
3. 3“Will you come and see the tree before giving me a written quote?”
4. 4“Is the quote free, and what is its validity period?”
5. 5“How do you reach the tree: rope, platform, ladder?”
6. 6“What happens to the wood: removed, chipped on site, left?”
7. 7“Do you have advice on the right time to work, given the species?”
8. 8“Which constraints do you see: line, neighbour, protected tree, nests?”
9. 9“Can I see photos of recent jobs, or contact a customer?”

Watch how they answer as much as what they answer. A professional who asks questions themselves (the height, the proximity of wires, vehicle access, the neighbourhood) is preparing their job. One who answers everything with “no problem, we’ll take care of it” without asking anything has not yet looked at it.

Pruning produces a volume you do not imagine: an average tree easily yields several cubic metres of branches, not counting the trunk. The first disagreement after a job almost always concerns this, because the quote did not mention it and each side assumed the opposite. Settle the question before signing.

• Removal: the business takes everything away and the ground is left clean. It is the simplest option, and it is paid for.
• Chipping on site: branches are reduced to chips, which you can keep to mulch your beds. It needs access for a chipper, therefore a wide enough passage.
• Wood left: the large wood is cut into logs and left for your heating, the offcuts being removed. To be written down in black and white.

And if the tree surgeon offers to “burn the branches on site to save time”: refuse. Open-air burning of green waste is prohibited for private individuals, and the prefectures of Vaucluse, Drôme, Gard and Ardèche also regulate the use of fire during the high-risk season. A professional who offers to get around the ban exposes you to the fine.

If the tree stands at the edge of scrubland or woodland, the job ties in with the legal brush-clearance obligation, explained in our article Mandatory brush clearance in France: the 50 metres, the neighbour, the penalties.

Searching for a pruning price online leads to ranges from a few tens of euros to over a thousand depending on the source, which is a way of saying they are of no use. We do not publish a price list, and we will not give you a figure over the phone: a tree is looked at on site, and an amount given unseen is an amount that will be revised. What can honestly be done is to explain what weighs in the calculation.

Two practical lessons. A price far below the other quotes is not a bargain: it is generally obtained by removing something, whether insurance, safety, waste removal or time spent on the tree. A higher price is not a guarantee either: it can cover a fuller service, or simply a margin. It is the detail of the quote that settles it, not the total.

Some garden upkeep work qualifies for a tax credit, under conditions that depend on the contractor. Before choosing, read our article The French gardening tax credit: ceiling, eligible work and approval.

This article is not a way of saying “choose us”. It is a set of checks that applies to any business, ours included, and it would be dishonest to write it without applying it to ourselves. So here is what you can verify, and what we prefer not to claim on your behalf.

• PJ Espaces Verts is a sole-trader business run by Josué Poulain, with no employees, based in Lapalud (84840). Its SIRET number appears on our legal notice, and you can verify it on the official business directory.
• It is Josué Poulain who comes, looks at the tree, writes the quote and carries out the job: you know who will work at your place.
• Our visit and our quote are free and written.
• Our Google rating is 5.0 from 21 reviews. They are on the Google listing, not on our site: read them there, with their date and the detail of each job.
• For insurance and qualifications, apply this article’s rule to us: ask for the supporting documents before signing. We put nothing forward without a document behind it.

We work in Lapalud, Bollène, Mondragon, Mornas, Pierrelatte, Pont-Saint-Esprit, Bourg-Saint-Andéol and within about 30 kilometres of Lapalud, across four départements: Vaucluse, Drôme, Gard and Ardèche. If you hesitate between two professionals, compare them on the twelve points of this article: the best choice is generally the one who answers the list most simply.