Elk Grove Christmas Tree Wrapping

A lit house with a pitch-black front yard under it looks like half a job. The tree by the sidewalk is usually what fixes that. Elk Grove Christmas tree wrapping means winding lights around the trunk, and sometimes out along the main limbs, of a tree already growing in your yard. (Not the one in the living room. You’re on your own with that one.)

Bare ones, mostly. A tree that drops its leaves by December shows its shape, and the shape is what you’re lighting. Crape myrtles are about the best wrap going: smooth trunks, several stems, low branching. Chinese pistache, ornamental pear, and young oaks or maples with a clear single trunk all come out well.

What doesn’t work is anything shaggy or dense. Italian cypress and big conifers swallow a trunk wrap, so they’re better with lights laid over the outside or left alone.

Age counts as much as species. In Laguna West the street trees stand in concrete wells close to the curb and have been growing since the early nineties, so there’s a real trunk and real limbs to work with. Around East Franklin and Franklin Reserve the trees are roughly twenty years along, which is a sweet spot: thick enough to carry a wrap, short enough to reach. Over at Esplanade at Madeira Ranch the planting is as new as the houses and nothing has a real trunk yet. We’ll tell you plainly to wait a few years and light the house instead.

One caution. If a tree belongs to an association or stands in a strip somebody else maintains, we leave it alone unless that association is who hired us.

A trunk wrap runs from the ground to the first fork. It’s tidy, it shows well from the sidewalk, and it suits a small yard. A canopy wrap keeps going, out each main limb for as long as the wood is thick enough to hold a strand and safe to reach. That’s what gives you a whole glowing outline in the fog, and it takes a good deal longer.

Our usual advice is to pick one or two trees and do them fully. Two well-wrapped trunks flanking a driveway beat six trees wearing a few loops each. Out in Sheldon, where houses sit far back and the driveway trees are what people see from the road, the trees often matter more than the roof does. Not sure which of yours to pick? Describe them to us at (916) 823-8394.

Quotes happen by phone or from pictures you send. Take one of the whole tree from the street and one of the trunk up close with a trash can beside it for scale. Tell us where the nearest outdoor outlet is, then call (916) 823-8394. Lights, ladders and timer all arrive with us.

Wrapped trees pair naturally with lights along the roofline and with stake lights down the front walk, which lead the eye from the tree to the door. We’re through Laguna West and East Franklin all season, so adding a tree to a roof job there is easy.

If part of a tree goes dark in December, ring (916) 823-8394 or use the contact form and we’ll deal with it.

Nothing goes into the tree. No staples, no nails, no screws, no zip ties cinched down hard. The strand holds by its own tension, snug enough to stay put in a stiff wind and loose enough to slip a finger under. Ends get tied back to the strand or held with soft ties that come off clean.

We don’t bend small branches to make a wrap fit, and we go easy on thin young bark where a tight strand could rub. Cords run along the ground to the outlet, tucked against the bed edge where a mower won’t find them.

The lights come off every single year. In January we unwind each strand by hand instead of pulling it, since yanking is what strips bark and snaps twigs. Leaving a wrap on for several seasons is how trees get girdled, because the trunk keeps growing and the wire doesn’t.

Will wrapping lights around my tree hurt it?

No. Nothing is stapled or nailed, the strand sits snug but not tight, and it all comes off in January so the trunk is never squeezed while it grows.

Can you wrap the tree between the sidewalk and the street?

If it’s yours to decorate, yes. If an association or the Cosumnes CSD maintains that strip, check with them first. We stay off common-area trees unless the association hires us.

Is Elk Grove Christmas tree wrapping worth it on trees planted last year?

Usually not yet. A trunk as thin as a broom handle doesn’t show much, and thin bark on a staked sapling shouldn’t carry a strand. Light the house now and revisit the trees later.

How high up a tree will you go?

As high as the limbs are sturdy and can be reached safely from a ladder. We’ll tell you from your photo where we’d stop.