Land Clearing and Forestry Mulching in Franklin County, OH: Columbus, New Albany, Canal Winchester

Six jobs make up our professional land clearing services in Franklin County. Lot clearing. Brush clearing on a fencerow. Stump grinding. Tree clearing inside the bat window. Site prep with grading. Underbrushing.

• Our land clearing service removes trees and brush, grinds the stumps and leaves a lot you can stake.
• Selective clearing keeps the oaks and takes the honeysuckle, callery pear and dead ash.
• Site clearing and dirt work services for a barn pad or a pond footprint, excavation by the hour.

Residential and commercial, both. No concrete, wells or septic from a land clearing service. A climber handles tree removal over a roof.

Forestry mulching here is 80 percent honeysuckle work. The rest is callery pear on old fields, multiflora rose on pasture, dead ash under the maples. The machine chews it standing. The mulch lays two to four inches deep and holds the clay through a wet April.

Honeysuckle resprouts from the crown, so a bush hog alone never finishes it. We grind the crown to dirt; you spray the regrowth that summer. Callery pear gets cut-stump treatment within minutes or it comes back fivefold. Our mulching services take the undergrowth and the trees and branches to 8 inches. Ash and hardwood over that we fell first. I bought the mulcher in 2017 because half my calls were a woodland nobody could walk. Lots overgrow in two seasons. Tell me what stays; we remove unwanted vegetation around it.

The county pulled 1,829 single-family permits in 2025, first in Ohio by the Census Building Permits Survey. Columbus took 907, Grove City 261, Hilliard 166. Most of our residential jobs are small residential lots: a half-acre woodlot is one day, $2,500.

Residential land clearing is a homeowner on an Alum Creek lot with a dead ash and a wall of honeysuckle. Commercial land clearing is the data center corridor on the New Albany side, where commercial development runs to the Licking line and the Intel site past it. Commercial land there gets the 300-hp mulcher. Master-planned communities and property development start with site preparation.

Land clearing in Franklin County runs $1,200 to $5,000 an acre, and honeysuckle density sets the number.

• Skid steer mulcher, stems to 8 inches: $2,500 a day, transport included.
• 300-hp mulcher, stems to 12 inches: $3,900 a day plus transport.
• Honeysuckle and brush: $1,200 to 2,000 an acre. Understory with dead ash: $1,800 to 2,600.
• Full clearing to dirt, stumps out: $2,800 to 5,000 an acre.
• Stump grinding $4 an inch, $150 minimum. Grubbing $160 an hour. Haul-off $600 to 1,100 a load.

Comparable job: 3 acres of honeysuckle woodlot outside Sunbury in Delaware County, a day and a half, $3,800. March and April add a day or we wait. The free quote is on-site; I walk the property and read the site conditions. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos to get an estimate. The budget range is in your email before the end of the day.

Franklin County's ground is silt loam over till clay, wet from Thanksgiving to May. Crosby and Kokomo soils hold water on the flats west of I-71. Near Hoover Reservoir the woodland sits on Brookston clay with box elder on the creek. Along the Scioto River it is sycamore bottoms and a hawthorn fence line. I walked a lot off US 33 last spring and the tile was running at 30 inches.

Frozen, mud or dust, pick one. Agricultural land opens after harvest. Dead ash tops drop before the trunk is touched, so we fell those first and keep the drainage swales open for the cleanup.

Burning land-clearing brush is out inside Columbus and every village in the county. Ohio EPA open-burning rules under OAC 3745-19 bar it inside corporation limits. Outside them the pile sits 1,000 feet from a neighbor's house with written notice to Ohio EPA, and ODNR Forestry bars daytime burning in spring and fall. So we mulch or haul.

A pad in a township needs the Franklin County Building Department permit plus a township zoning certificate. Inside the city it is Columbus Building and Zoning Services. Clearing alone on acreage needs no permit; farm use is exempt under ORC 519.21. At 1 acre of disturbance Franklin SWCD reviews the erosion and sediment control plan. I wrote those plans on pads along I-71 for fourteen years.

Kokomo flats and vernal pools can be isolated wetlands; Ohio EPA Level 1 covers fill up to half an acre. Streams go to the USACE Huntington District. Trees over 3 inches on tracts over 1 acre come down October 1 to March 31 for the Indiana bat. OUPS 811 before any stump work.

Frozen ground is the best land clearing season in the county, December through February. The clay sets up, the mulcher rides on top, no mud surcharge. The bat window is open. On our jobs last winter we ran 11 straight days without a rut. In April a dozer sinks to the axle. Book January early.

Our service area is all of Franklin County, OH and the surrounding areas, transport included. The towns we serve in Franklin County most: Columbus, Canal Winchester on the Fairfield line, Grove City, Hilliard, Reynoldsburg. We are serving Franklin County from the yard that covers six counties in Ohio, our Central Ohio circle. Across Franklin County the drive is under an hour. Throughout Franklin County the price is the same.

Ready to clear a lot or a woodlot? Our insured crews bring the experience and equipment to handle honeysuckle and clay, safely and efficiently. Expert land clearing means land clearing projects logged since 2018. Clearing land you cannot walk will transform it into a lot you can stake. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos. I email you a budget range and two dates before the end of the day.