Palm health.
A few years ago I saw a gap.
Plenty of companies cut palms and trees. Very few were watching their health. So I turned my focus to palm health, tree health and proper pruning, and I am dedicating the rest of my career to it.
About Ptolemy
Palm and tree care, at scale.
Health care, pruning and removals for the people who run communities, in one written plan that fits the budget. Built for thousands of palms and trees, not one backyard.
ISA Certified Arborist #FL-10118ATree Risk Assessment QualifiedPrescription Pruning Qualified
Our name
Ptolemy is said TOL-uh-mee.
The P is silent.
We are named after Claudius Ptolemy, a scholar who worked in Alexandria, Egypt, around 150 AD. His Geography gave about 8,000 places a position by latitude and longitude, one of the first attempts to map the known world on a grid.
We wanted a unique name with some history to it that relates to what we do. Every palm and tree we care for is mapped to its own point in our GIS inventory.
Ptolemy mapped the world. We map the palms and trees.
Palm and tree care at scale
A community is a different job from a backyard.
“There’s a difference between working for a homeowner and working for a community, an ISD, or a CDD. The budget’s tighter. The scope of work is much larger, and there’s just a different mentality in working at a large scale versus a small scale.”
Jeff Kaulbars80%Normal is 80%
Normal means 80 percent canopy health or better, on our five-tier condition scale. From the Protect what matters level up, our target is 80% of the inventory at Normal. It is a management target, not a guarantee, and every report shows where your inventory stands against it.
1Two gaps
Landscapers mow and tree services cut. Almost nobody watches palm and tree health. And almost nobody plans that care across thousands of palms and trees on a community budget. We work in both gaps.
2Honest limits
A plan cannot give every palm the care one homeowner gives one palm. Living things are not cheap to care for. What a plan can do is hold the whole inventory at a level the budget can carry, and spend first where it does the most good.
The arborist behind the work
Thirty years of putting the puzzle together.
I started over 30 years ago in residential lawn care, with nothing but a mower and a dream. Once I got into the scale of HOAs and master-planned communities, it became a puzzle I like to put into place. Since then I have led tree, landscape and storm recovery work for master-planned communities, golf courses, municipalities and large commercial properties, with my share of highs and lows along the way.
There are wonderful, exceptional ISA Certified Arborists and board-certified master arborists who care for trees one at a time. That is an expertise in itself. Managing palms and trees at scale, with the goal of the best care in a budget environment, is a different game. That is my goal, and it is what this company is built on.
I have worked in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Everywhere I saw the same need: real specs and honest expectations for what a community can get on its budget. Would I love a budget two or three times bigger? Yes. But communities are on a budget, so we do everything we can to make good care accessible to an HOA, a CDD and an ISD.
Pruning by prescription.
Every cut written as a prescription for that tree, to the ANSI A300 standard.
Heavy trimming that strips palms down to a few fronds and thins trees to bare limbs is still common here. We prefer not to. The Prescription Pruning Qualification gave me real facts on how to prune. Pruning also spreads disease. Fusarium wilt moves through a community on dirty pruning tools, and most people do not know it. We offer sterilized handsaw protocols for the palms at risk.
How prescription pruning works
Plants that start behind.
Too often, the palms and trees going into new developments would not make the grade.
Becoming a certified landscape inspector changed how I look at new trees and palms. I learned to grade plant material against Florida’s standards. Some cannot be graded at all. Those plants start behind the eight ball.
Florida Grades and StandardsThe soil and the water.
We measure the ground and the water before we decide what care can do.
A lot of the research on palm care was not done on new construction, on limestone, or with lake water. That is exactly where our communities sit. New trees and palms often go into compacted fill, where a soil probe hits hard ground within a few inches, and irrigation water from limestone lakes carries salt and lime that build up around the roots.
Soil and irrigation
Built for scale.
Storm work is where scale shows.
I have led large-scale hurricane and storm recovery across the Southeast and the Caribbean, from Florida hurricanes to the Nashville ice storm, running several projects at once. The job is scaling crews, equipment and systems fast, under pressure. My work has supported national resort and golf operators, home builders and general contractors, master-planned communities, and a number of cities and municipalities.
Storm responseFrameworks that work.
The fastest path to mastery: apply proven frameworks in the field, then teach them.
I am a certified facilitator of FranklinCovey’s The 4 Disciplines of Execution and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
What we are building.
Our goal is to change the industry when it comes to palm and tree care at scale.
Storm response, pruning, palm health and tree health monitoring now sit under one roof. Together they should be the base of any community’s tree plan, with a budget set 10 years out. So I ask every community the same thing: what is your plan, and who is watching your palms and trees?
Credentials
What we hold, and what it means to your board.
Giving back
On stage, sharing what we learned the hard way.
Jeff speaks at community and industry events. Two subjects come up most. What palm disease costs a community that waits too long. And what he learned building a business: fail fast, and find good mentors early.
It took him a couple of years to find his first mentors. He has had good ones ever since, and speaking is how he passes it on.
Published in Tree Care Industry MagazineLethal Bronzing in Palms: Test Before You TreatBy Jeff Kaulbars. TCI Magazine, Tree Care Industry Association, November 4, 2026. Read the article →Jeff’s story in USA TodayJeff Kaulbars: the $20M setback that transformed palm care in FloridaUSA Today contributor content, June 11, 2025. Read the story →Ptolemy on Yahoo FinancePtolemy Launches Comprehensive Palm Tree Healthcare to Combat Florida’s Growing ThreatsPress release, ACCESS Newswire, March 13, 2025. Read the release →
In the field
Hear it from Jeff.
Short clips from our YouTube channel, filmed in the field.
Why we exist
One team for every palm and tree on the property.
Landscapers handle turf, shrubs and irrigation. Tree services trim and remove. The palms and trees that carry a property’s value fall in between. Ptolemy closes that gap: health care, pruning, removals and storm response from one team, watching on a schedule and catching problems while they can still be fixed.
We lead with nutrition, vector control and monitoring, not routine injection, and we confirm disease in a lab before we treat.
We track every palm and tree on a schedule so problems surface early.
Nutrition, pruning and the work that keeps a healthy palm or tree healthy.
We defend high-value and at-risk palms and trees against named threats.
Where we work
NaplesCollier County
Fort MyersLee County
Bonita SpringsLee County
EsteroLee County
Port CharlotteCharlotte County
SarasotaSarasota and Manatee
Port St. LucieTreasure Coast
Master-planned communities, HOA and POA boards, CDDs and ISDs, golf courses and commercial properties, and homeowners with high-value palms.
Next step
Pick the door that fits.
I sit on a boardFacts for board members
What a palm and tree plan does for the budget, and the questions to ask any vendor.
Read the board factsI manage the propertyFacts for managersThe answers and the paperwork you need when the board asks.
Read the manager factsShow meSee the proofThe data, the before and after photos, and a district three years in.
See our workReady to startRequest the free master planWe map every palm and tree, write the plan, and present it to your board.
Request the free master planStart with the free master plan
What is your plan, and who is watching your palms and trees?
One written plan, 10 years. We map every palm and tree, write the plan, and present it to your board.
Request the free master plan
ISA Certified Arborist #FL-10118A · TRAQ · Licensed Florida pest control business