Notice - August 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.
The City of Toronto maintains trees located on City-managed lands, including those found in parks as well as over 600,000 street trees located on the portion of land between the roadway and private property, known as the public road allowance. This work includes carrying out inspections, pruning, and removing trees when necessary. This work keeps residents safe and supports a healthy and resilient urban forest that includes trees on streets and in parks.
Pruning is performed by City staff following tree pruning guidelines, following proper arboricultural standards:
Tree pruning or other maintenance that has been confirmed to be necessary by Urban Forestry staff will be performed on a priority basis or as part of regularly scheduled maintenance.
The City of Toronto has authority under the Tree Bylaw (Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 813, Article II) to maintain trees on City streets. The City will occasionally prune private trees according to proper arboricultural standards in order to clear tree limbs and branches interfering with street lighting, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, utility conductors and any City-owned pathway or roadway that has public use.
To request pruning you must provide the street address and the reason for pruning. Requests for pruning can be submitted for up to three trees. If submitting requests for multiple trees the address and reason for pruning for each tree must be included. Urban Forestry does not accept requests for pruning entire streets (also known as ‘block pruning’).
If the tree has been pruned within the last seven years, Urban Forestry will not accept pruning requests.