Arboriculturists and tree services have been a small but steady presence in the membership at Oregon Aglink. They fit into a valuable niche of professionals who work with the growing things around us in Oregon.
Take a single tree, for instance. Many nurseries and greenhouses in the Oregon Aglink membership might be done with an individual tree when it’s just a sapling headed out to a sales area or loaded onto a truck. By the time Nate Goodwin or his team at Timber Stand Improvement visit a tree, it’s often much older, much bigger, and typically needs some help.
“We come out to the mature or established trees that are having safety issues,” says Goodwin.
So while nurseries and greenhouses may give their products the best start in life, Goodwin’s tree service business in Central Oregon helps property owners, development companies, and even city parks keep trees as safe and healthy as they can be for the people enjoying them years and even decades after they’ve left the nursery.
Busy Season All Year-Round
Like tree services in the Willamette Valley and the rest of the state, TSI is always ready to go into “storm-mode” during heavy weather. “We’re known for really technical hazard trees,” says Goodwin. “Maybe you can’t get a crane to it. I’ve had clients call who have already tried three or four services who wouldn’t do it and say ‘they told me to call you.’”
Downed branches, split trunks, and even whole roots unearthed during inclement weather can send people running for the phones and keep crews busy, but keeping trees healthy before the stress of storms is part of the tree service as well.
“We’re extremely fortunate and grateful to have year-round work,” says Goodwin, who keeps his five other certified arborists and foreman occupied full time. “We’re always about four to six weeks out on our schedule.”
The team serves a large chunk of Central Oregon centered around their homebase of Bend. Along with residential property owners, there are around thirty homeowners associations who call on TSI for work near houses or on street trees. They also have a robust client base at Black Butte Ranch where Goodwin has been a long-time vendor listed and trusted by owners around the resort.
In the city of Bend, the Parks and Recreation department uses Timber Stand Improvement for about seventy percent of their tree work following the risk assessments. “They aren’t qualified to do anything off the ground, or technical [jobs], or large trees,” says Goodwin. “That was a very competitive position to get into, but now that we’re there we have this understanding that we do what we do, and that it’s very trustworthy work.”
Building a Team
Nate Goodwin started Timber Stand Improvement in 2009 after seven years with a silviculturist crew in the Forest Service and fielding a number of unofficial requests from people who knew he was handy with a chainsaw. It was a one-man show until 2020 when a favorite subcontractor was shutting down his own business. “He had all these awesome guys that I already knew and had helped train,” says Goodwin. Even though he hadn’t planned to expand at that time, he knew it was an opportunity and remembers thinking “I’ll figure out how to be your employer.” 
“I really learned how to scale the company as more employee-based and what they need,” he says. “I felt this responsibility to keep them going and keep them busy. I didn’t want to let them down. It was a pretty big learning curve for me but awesome to do.”
Of the three employees that came on board, two still work with Goodwin, including his foreman Juan Vasquez. Says Goodwin, “the only reason the other one left for Northern Washington was that he liked the rock climbing up there.”
Others have come onto the team over time without Goodwin ever advertising for positions. He keeps an open employment application form on his website year-round, saying “you never know what kind of awesome person is just looking for work.” As new residents relocate to the area or young people graduate and look for their career, Goodwin is paying well and proud of the training that he provides.
Growing with the Changes
An evolving landscape around Central Oregon has created new opportunities for consultation and specialty work at a company like Timber Stand Improvement.
Increasingly intense and widespread wildfires have led many communities in Oregon to adopt new guidelines about fuel management and ignition zones around houses. Goodwin helps assess, treat, and certify, he says, “getting people into compliance for insurance reasons or neighborhood requirements” for programs like Firewise USA.
Additionally, as the towns in Central Oregon continue to attract tourists and expand with new residents, some trees stay and some trees make way for brand new houses: “anything they can’t push over with an excavator, they give us a call.” At the same time, he points out, a shift of internal committees in the city of Bend has led to companies needing to obtain more permits for tree removal and to meet new requirements for replanting
Cities like Bend and Redmond are also looking toward replacing trees that have been damaged during the 2021 heat dome and other long-term drought conditions that are damaging and killing municipal trees.
Even though Goodwin and his crew don’t focus on sourcing or planting trees to fit those needs, they’re doing assessments to help communities plan their next steps for managing the landscape around them, whether that’s a single tree on a quarter acre or an entire stand of trees that need a good five-year plan.
Timber Stand Improvement is staying flexible and looking forward, and Goodwin is thinking positive: “What’s a good way to scale? What’s a strategy to shift or transition? That might be the key. We’re going to grow with these changes and still be a tree service.”
“It’s feeling pretty good with new opportunities and ways to grow here.”
By Allison Cloo