Trees Are Our Lifeline
Artful Pruning
Trees take in carbon dioxide therefore clean our air.
Trees give off oxygen, therefore feeding us the very thing we have to have in order to live for even a few minutes.
Trees can create environments. Please check out the link to the Nobel Peace Prize winning Wangari Maathai’s website and magnificent film called “Taking Root”. This film is about her work in Kenya with deforested, destroyed landscapes brought back to life simply by groups of women planting trees. The trees bring water, clean air, habitats for wildlife, and restored life and livelihoods for the people of the regions where these miracles take place.
Trees need our expert care to stay healthy and beautiful.
Artful, aesthetic, masterful pruning will extend the life of your trees.
Click on any of the pictures below to see a larger version. Move your mouse over the larger picture to see the slideshow navigation buttons.
This beautiful Podocarpus had been pruned before, probably in a shearing kind of way that caused it to grow inward and dense and then react outwardly to look unkempt.
I opened and thinned the branches, took out the knots at the top of the tree. Now it has room to grow without becoming overly dense and more difficult to prune later.
Stage 1: A good example of pruning in progression, rather than with aggression
Stage 2: Taking out some of what I eventually wanted to prune, allowed the tree to adjust to the pruning without reacting and causing more vegetation that needed to be cut out
Stage 3: At last, small enough to fit the space, while maintaining some privacy
Before: This lemon was much too full, hanging over the sidewalk
After: I thinned the branches, brought it back from the path, and raised it up to get air under the tree, get the grass out from under
Before: Long gangly whips made this Coral Bark Maple look unkempt
After: I removed the long whips, dead wood, and thinned it a bit
Before: this lemon tree needed reducing
After: airy, sun inside, off house
This Japanese Maple gets a pruning in the winter to keep its shape as a winter silhouette. Then needs trimming in the spring after its many leaves burst out.
Many leaves and new little branches have been taken off, and there is more light in the living room now. The Coral Bark maple to the right also gets a pruning though it is much thinner and the Laceleaf maple to the left.
What is this tree?
Before
After
Ahhhh, it’s a gorgeous Japanese Black Pine!
