We rebuild hillsides in Mt. Lebanon and the South Hills where the first machine pass is billed as "clearing." The trees that actually hold the clay bank get treated as furniture in the way. Then the new wall needs more height because the root plates are gone. Tag the trees before the grade moves. A shrub list is not the same job.
Eichenlaub puts tree protection on the design drawing, not on a wish after the excavator is on site.
The trees that hold the bank are not the trees in the patio photo
The maple that screens the neighbor may be expendable. The oak on the downhill shoulder whose roots knit the fill is not. We walk the slope and mark trunks that are doing structural work. Photograph from the street and from the bottom of the bank. A tree that looks crowded from the kitchen may be the only thing keeping clay on your lot instead of on theirs.
This is narrower than a general keeper list of walls and beds. It is the canopy and the root plate. Sustainable landscape work on a Pittsburgh hillside starts with those plates. New planting does not replace them on a schedule you will live to see.
Fencing has to sit outside the dripline you mean to keep
A ribbon of fence against the trunk is theater. Construction traffic still packs the roots. We set protection at a distance the machine can actually respect, and we write where spoils can sit. Fill piled on a keeper's roots is how a tagged tree dies in year two while the new patio looks finished.
Trenching for irrigation and lighting through a tagged root zone is a separate decision, not an oops. If the rebuild needs a lateral there, we say the tree may not survive that cut. Pair the rebuild with build notes that list every trench.
Clay cut banks dry and then slump when you remove the trees that were pumping water. A new wall is not a free substitute. Price the wall honestly if the trees are coming out.
Mt. Lebanon lots do not have spare hillside
Tight South Hills lots put the new patio, the old oak, and the neighbor's view in the same 30 feet. We will say if the patio has to shrink to keep the tree, or if the tree goes and the bank needs engineered work. Those are not the same quote.
Maintenance after a rebuild should get a written list of tagged trunks, watering in the first drought, and what the crew must not pile against them. See the portfolio for hillsides where canopy stayed.
Put tags on trunks before the dumpster
Before demolition, we want a tree list with keep, protect, and remove, plus a photo of each trunk. If a utility mark conflicts with a keeper, it is its own conversation. Call (412) 767-4769 or contact us. More notes live in our articles.