Pruning
Pruning trees is an important part of maintaining tree health. Here are some of the pruning services we offer. Every pruning we do has a purpose for the health, structure, or appearance of your trees, and we consider many factors such as time of year, tree stress, and growth habits. All pruning is performed by, or under direct supervision of, an ISA Certified Arborist, and to ANSI A300 standards.
Crown Cleaning
Pruning to promote tree health, safety, and appearance by removing branches that are dead or dying, or have poor growth habits such as water sprouts/vertical shoots, and branches that are broken, crossing, rubbing, competing, poor-tapered, diseased, or low vigor.
Clearance Pruning
Trees growing too close to houses or other buildings, or interfering with the use of driveways and walkways can be pruned properly for clearance and to preserve a natural appearance.
Crown Raising
A type of pruning where the lowest branches of a tree are either reduced or removed to create clearance between the ground and the lowest branches, often used for walkways and for lines of sight along roadways, but also for appearance and tree health.
Structural Pruning
Young trees and transplanted trees often need to be trained by pruning. By eliminating co-dominant stems, subordinating laterals, and other pruning, we can prevent many problems that affect the future health, safety, and appearance of trees.
Crown Reduction
In cases where a tree has grown too tall and/or wide for its location, it may be possible to reduce the height and/or width using reduction pruning cuts, rather than topping, to minimize the size of a tree’s crown without harming the tree.
Crown Restoration
Trees that have been topped in the past have been under extreme stress. The way in which they regrow their crowns for survival puts them at risk of health and safety issues, and can make them look unsightly. We restore the crown to a more natural state by eliminating crossing/rubbing branches and weakly attached branches that are prone to failure, and thinning excess sprouting.
Crown Thinning
Crown Thinning is a type of Crown Cleaning that includes removing healthy branches to reduce the interior of a tree crown for many reasons. It’s a practice that is sometimes overused, and can have negative long-term side effects. Great care should be taken when thinning trees, and should only used to solve a specific problem with respect to overall tree health. No more than 25% of tree foliage should be removed in a single season, as specified by ANSI A300 standards.
Hazard Pruning
Pruning to reduce the risk of personal injury and property damage involves a combination of our other pruning types.
Fruit Tree Pruning
Pruning fruit trees for fruit production requires special pruning techniques. In late winter or early spring, we prune for structure and to encourage growth. During the growing season, we prune to reduce growth.