Tag: pruning

Seattle Chainsaw Massacre

In the spirit of the season I’m including some photos from our neighbor’s willow tree that failed a few years ago.  The failure wasn’t unexpected, given the age of the tree and the lack of crown care it received.  What’s truly scary is the “tree service” that came out to deal with the problem.  Low bid wins again!

(And yes, I’ll post a puzzler as well.  Two for one today!)

Here’s the willow after the crown collapsed

Rickety ladder + chainsaw = suspense!… Continue reading this article “Seattle Chainsaw Massacre”

The joys of arborizing!

It’s Holly’s day…but she’s off playing in a tropical paradise.  So because she seems to be of a sunnier disposition than I am, I’ll post happy thoughts today.

One of my favorite pruning techniques, especially for small urban landscapes, is arborizing.  This is a way of creating small trees out of large shrubs – and often, a large shrub is as much as a small landscape can handle.  Rhododendrons are common landscape plants here in Seattle, and the larger ones lend themselves beautifully to this practice:

  

As you’ll notice in this example, arborizing not only creates an aesthetically pleasing tree form, but also moves the crown away from vehicular and pedestrian traffic. … Continue reading this article “The joys of arborizing!”

Building a better tree? Not in the long run!

One of the landscape tree production practices that drives me absolutely nuts is heading back trees in the nursery to create “columnar” specimens.  It’s easy to find examples of these in Washington state nurseries, like the pathetic oak shown below:

 

Aesthetics aside, let’s focus on how the tree responds to heading back.  The removal of the dominant leader encourages lateral branches below to become more upright; from these laterals, a new leader is selected.  This new upright growth habit is highly prized by many landscape architects and urban planners, as such trees fit more neatly into small urban spaces without interfering with vehicle and pedestrian traffic. … Continue reading this article “Building a better tree? Not in the long run!”