WHY PRUNE?

I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I, and I'm sure many others appreciate it very much!!!

This is a career that we are proud of. We get angry when we see so much improper work being done and people being cheated. It usually boils down to the cheapest bid gets the job, but if the cheapest bid, costs you your trees, how much did you save?

We are still in a severe drought in my part of Australia, and all the trees that shouldn't have been planted around here are all dying or dead. My son's school is about 150 years old and there "was" a row of very old crepe myrtles out the front that could well have been over a century old. Well the maintenance man thought he would cut those trees right back to about a 3rd of their height last winter, and come spring they looked very healthy. By mid summer after relentless heatwaves they were all dead because there's been no rain to support all that new fresh growth and they hadn't kept up with the watering. Those trees untouched had been through many severe droughts. They didn't look great because they grew to the conditions which meant a much sparser canopy, but at least they weren't dead and didn't require much help. Idiots let loose on trees with cutting implements really annoy the hell out of me.

As a 15 year landscaper and a 10 year certified arborist with many licenses and certifications I really appreciate what you are teaching/spreading..... knowledge.

I've been examining & dealing with previously topped trees for years. When you top a branch, the tree's defense is to throw 10 water sprout to that location. The limb can not support all the sprout, so it selectively kills a few. If these are not removed immediately, they leave a cavity & it starts to retain water & introduces rot! Great video

I have watched your videos for years. I was the ignorant person before finding your channel. Now I notice trees and think about their health everywhere I go. Thank you for the knowledge. Your dissecting of tree failures is my favorite part of your videos. I will say the pruning situation seems much worse in your area than it is in Mississippi where I live. Only trees that get butchered here are power company victims. Residents let their trees grow for the most part.

I recently bought and planted 10 Cypress trees and everyone starts telling me to prune prune prune and my gut instinct always says let them grow naturally and they will be stronger. Thanks for reinforcing my better judgement.

When you talked about those disastrously pruned trees; I instantly thought about my dad’s garden...😭😣 He pruned everything excessively every year. I’ve shared this video with him; hopefully he’ll watch & gain some knowledge 🤞🏻 Thank you very much for sharing

I maintain fruit trees both commercial and residential. We always prune, just today I pruned darn near 30% off over 20+ small fruit trees. The types of trees in this video are a totally different scope, with different rules. I am really glad this video has taught me that I WILL NOT PRUNE THESE TYPES OF TREES🌲🌳! You know that over confident guy talk, I could easily see myself at some point saying "ohh yeah, I pruned many fruit trees, of course I can top and shape your ___ tree." And totally murder one of these beauties. Thank you so much for saving me from that fate! I will show many people this video, I hope it goes viral. Although the tree trimming industry will feel that big hit.

Another great informational video. This is why its important for tree service owners to become actual certified arborist with the ISA. About 90% of the trees we get called to prune have been topped, once youre up there you can see, HOW bad the decay is.

Blair, a lot of your videos should have gone viral already, but apparently a lot of people would rather watch stuff that is stupid and silly and that adds nothing to their lives, rather than actually gain some knowledge about the Natural world around them and about trees that they most likely have in their own yards. Sad...real sad. I have well over 100 trees of at least 10 or more species here at my place of about 3 1/4 Acres and I have learned a lot from you. You deserve to have a much bigger following. But I'm sure glad that you keep doing what you do...a lot of us really appreciate it.

I'm seeing more and more of this butchery these days, not just the crepe myrtles. I can't fathom the reasons for doing so. Thanks for showing the problem for what it is.

I used to be in the tree business and I've seen so much of what he's showing here. It's disgusting how so many "professionals" who slaughter trees like that.

I recall a YouTube video about coppicing and pollarding. The video was about producing firewood (or poles for staves or wattle and daub, etc.) from those shoots. Coppicing is done close to the ground. Pollarding is done higher up to keep the shoots out of the reach of deer or cows while they are still tender. The shoots at a few inches diameter are easy to harvest safely and regenerate relatively quickly. Obviously, the limb weight doesn't become a problem, and the trees are grown for the purpose of being so harvested and replaced. Coppicing is also a way to grow a hedgerow. I've always had a negative reaction to seeing pollarded trees in the winter, though.

I went to see a GP last year. Their car park had had a variety of beautiful trees. Sadly, someone butchered all of them, a few weeks before my visit. Every cut was close within an inch or two of the supporting branch. If you had not provided videos such as this one, I wouldn't have seen anything wrong with that. Thanks for the education, Blair.

Fantastic video! Echoes the sentiment of so many of us tree guys in the UK. Absolutely no end of shoddy sub-standard work here, council funded and to high amenity trees and carried out by well respected companies! It’s shocking. Cheers for taking the time to make this. Aiken

Dude you’re awesome! I’ve found lots of great info on climbing and cutting etc on YouTube… But it until I found your channel I kept having unanswered questions about all this type of stuff, and it’s amazing to just be able to click a video and have you explain causes and effects and decision-making and stuff like that. This is the stuff I want to know before I even do anything or touch a tree, or even think I know what I’m about to do to it. Thank you so much!!

Unfortunately I have seen many examples of bad pruning in my country (Spain). Trees are pruned radically, especially sycamore trees. Thanks for showing us how to treat trees properly, by your comments one can notice you love trees.

My grandparents had a Sugar Maple in their small urban yard, very similar "hack-job" to the last tree you showed in this video. Well, we cut the tree down when it got really bad, but was still very much "alive". We proceeded to cut and split the entire thing into firewood. The huge massive chunks at the top were a mangled mess of new growth with extensive amounts of rot inside and throughout. There was a stark contrast between what appeared to be new vibrant growth, mere fractions of an inch away from massive pockets of absolute rot that you could break apart in your fingers.

In this suburban area where I find myself unfortunately marooned for almost 20 years it is quite remarkable how the people here have a positive mania about disfiguring trees by cutting them back severely. Most of my neighbors, who often on their tiny lots are lucky to have one or two trees for shade, are constantly calling in the landscape people to work the tops down. The results are uniformly hideous and of course they weaken the trees so mishandled. At least from having been brought up on a farm and owning farmland later on I had some basic knowledge of how to handle trees which saved me both money and the lives of the trees themselves.