Tree trimming, pruning and deadwood removal

The single most common thing we are called in to fix is somebody else's pruning. Improper cuts, stubs left standing, limbs taken off flush into the trunk, whole crowns cut back to nothing. A tree answers a bad cut with a mass of weak regrowth, and that regrowth is what fails in the next big wind. So before anything comes off we work out what the tree is actually doing and why, and then take the smallest number of cuts that get you what you want.

Most of the trimming we do is about clearance and about weight. Branches on the roof, in the gutters, across a drive or hanging over a garden nobody wants to sit in any more. Deadwood high in a broadleaf that drops a piece every time the weather turns. A limb that has grown out over a shed or a neighbour's fence and now carries more weight at the end than the union can hold. Each of those has a right answer and it is rarely taking everything off.

We trim trees and we trim shrubs and hedges, which in practice is the same visit on a lot of properties. The laurel along the boundary, the arborvitae that has taken the path, the climbing vine that has gone up the siding and into the eaves. It all gets cut to an agreed line, and the line is agreed with you standing there before anything is cut, not after.

Timing matters more than people expect. Fruit trees have their own cycle and an old apple that nobody has touched for fifteen years cannot be brought back in one afternoon without hurting it. That is staged over seasons. Most established broadleaf trees in this valley are best worked in the dormant months when the structure is visible and the tree is not pushing growth. We will tell you if waiting a few months gets you a better result, even though that means we do not do the work today.

Everything that comes off goes through the chipper on site, the ground is raked, and the beds underneath get cleared out. A trim job should leave no sign of itself except the tree looking right. Estimates are free, they happen at the property, and most jobs are quoted the same day we look.

There are two things we will not do, and it is worth saying them plainly. We will not take an overgrown fruit tree back to size in one visit, because removing that much at once provokes a mass of weak growth and sets the tree back years. And we will not cut a mature tree back to bare stubs to make it smaller, because what grows back is weaker than what was there and the problem returns bigger in five years. If size is the real issue, sometimes the honest answer is a removal and a replanting, and we will say so.

Who the work is for changes what we recommend. If you are staying in the house, we prune for what the tree will be doing in ten years. If you are selling next spring, the job is clearance and tidiness and we will keep it to that rather than sell you a programme. Either way the estimate is free, it happens at the property, and you get the honest version of what your trees need rather than the longest list we could write.