(317) 555-0142

Is they dug and graded and parked right next to my tree during the build, and now it looks bad an emergency?

Within days. The tree lost part of its absorbing root system and, wherever soil was compacted, the pore space its roots depend on for oxygen. Tree roots are shallow and wide — most of them in roughly the top foot of soil and extending well past the dripline — so a trench that looked comfortably far from the trunk usually was not. Compaction does comparable damage and is invisible from the surface. And roots cut on one side means anchorage lost on that side, so this is a stability question as much as a health question.

What changes while you wait

Slow, and this is the part that trips people up. Symptoms commonly take one to seven years to appear, and a tree can look fine through the first season and be dead in the fourth, which is also why liability arguments after a build get ugly. The stability risk does not lag, though: a tree with severed anchoring roots can uproot in the first strong wind after the work, especially once soil is saturated. While you wait, the tree spends reserves it cannot replace, decay enters through cut root ends and works back toward the root collar, and secondary pests find a weakened host. The window where intervention actually changes the outcome is the first two seasons — once dieback reaches the upper crown you are managing a result rather than altering it.

Related

Get it done

Talk to someone(317) 555-0142