Greg Ranallo rarely gets to climb trees anymore. At age 62, after running his tree care business for two decades, he mostly works behind a desk doing payroll and paperwork, not in the field with his crew.

On a recent day, though, he hoisted himself about 45 feet into the canopy of a giant pin oak tree in Charlotte to help his arborists with a major pruning job. The tree — likely close to 70 years old, Ranallo guessed — had grown cluttered with leafless branches, creating a safety risk if they fell.

“It just hadn’t been pruned in 30 years,” said Ranallo, owner of Teachers Tree Service in Shelburne. “It was full of deadwood.”

Ranallo wore a lime-green helmet and a forest-green Teachers T-shirt as he dangled between branches. He balanced on a limb, one foot in front of the other, reaching with a long polesaw to fell the oak’s outer boughs.

“He’s in his happy place,” Eric Reindel, one of Ranallo’s employees, said as he collected the fallen debris and fed it into a wood chipper.

Ranallo is like a tree doctor and teacher all in one. The former high school educator — yes, that’s where the name Teachers comes from — administers care and treatment to keep deciduous and coniferous specimens strong. For property owners grappling with everything from overgrown shrubs to the threat of invasive pests, particularly the dreaded emerald ash borer, Teachers offers information and an honest appraisal of tree health with the sole goal of helping trees live their best lives.

To read more about how Teachers Tree cares for you trees, read the rest of this article here.

Seven Days

Photo by James Buck