“Why not just let trees grow wild like in nature?” What if you did that with your kids. Nature is great but trees can also use care and loving attention.
Cities are not natural environments and trees need our help. Pruning maximizes their health and vitality by:
- Removing dead and damaged branches, which can act as entry points for disease and insects
- Directing the tree’s vitality into strong, healthy limbs and properly direct the growth of the tree making sure that the tree stays balanced and attractive
- Promoting air flow through the tree, minimizing fungus-friendly damp conditions and reducing wind and snow loading
In the tree above, we see an example of a tree that’s probably never been pruned. All of the branches are shooting upwards, competing for light and rubbing the bark off of one another. There are dead branches.
All of the small, weak branches create more wind resistance while at the same time having weak junctions, making them more liable to splitting in heavy winds and snow loads.
In a natural forest, trees are crowded closer together, which causes the tree to send up a strong central trunk upwards in search of light, and towards the top of the canopy branches can stretch out in the sun. In an open field, the tree shoots out abundant branches every which way.
Structural Pruning
The Tree Tailor uses the structural pruning method, recommended by the International Society of Arboriculture:
- Develop a strong structure with a centralized trunk
- Remove upward driving branches that compete with the trunk, emphasizing horizontal branches that are much stronger and less likely to split
- Give proper spacing between branches
- Ensure that the mass of the tree is balanced and the weight is not all to one side
- Remove dead, damaged, diseased or rubbing branches
For more details, check out this white paper by the ISA or the University of Florida’s page on structural pruning