Notice - January 14, 2025: Urban Forestry has an extremely high volume of planned tree maintenance requests at this time. City crews and contractors are working diligently to complete these work orders. We appreciate your patience.
City of Toronto Urban Forestry staff are responsible for the maintenance of City-owned trees on City streets and City of Toronto parks. Forestry staff across the City of Toronto prune trees according to the following general guidelines:
1. to encourage the health of a tree;
2. to clear tree limbs and branches interfering with structures, street lighting, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, utility conductors and traffic signals or signs;
3. to remove dead broken or split limbs; and/or
4. to maintain structural stability and balance of a tree.
Tree work is only undertaken if deemed to be necessary according to these guidelines. Trees will not be pruned simply to thin out foliage.
Please refer to the City’s Tree Pruning Guidelines for more information.
In areas where there is a lot of street parking, temporary no parking signs may be used to alert people to where crews will be working the next day. City crews will also distribute cards with information about upcoming work. Please do not park in the work zone during the designated no parking period. If crews require your vehicle to be moved in order to access a street tree for maintenance, staff will try to contact you to move your vehicle. If we are not able to reach you, your vehicle may be towed to the closest legal parking location at no charge to you.
Vehicle owners can contact the non-emergency police line to find where their car has been relocated to at 416-808-2222, press 4 and then press 2.
To expedite non-emergency tree maintenance on City-owned trees a homeowner may apply for permission to hire a contractor, at their own cost, to perform standard tree maintenance work. The City may approve the application if the request is deemed to be in compliance with the City's pruning standards.
For more information about City-owned tree maintenance, please visit the City website.
A request for the following can be made online by using 311 online portal; 311 mobile application or by calling 311:
• General Pruning Request
• Sight Line Obstruction Request
• Commercial Tree Pruning Request
• Commercial Tree Maintenance Request