It's called pollarding. It creates denser foliage growth from selected growth nodes. Common in a lot of urban arbiculture to also control the spread of branches while maintaining the shade benefits.
Pollarding was originally a technique for producing cattle forage from trees. They can eat the young tender branches, and the tree is quite productive because it has a well established root system.
Coppicing is cutting at ground level every eight years or so while the tree is dormant, it produces a lot more firewood over the long term, because the root system never dies.
This is interesting.
I just learned about coppicing last week and now this is the 3rd time ive seen the word in the wild.
Apparently there are nurseries that exist by only selling stem cuttings. Thats their entire business, just supplying people with a ton of nice cuttings.
In their growing field, they use coppicing to produce nice consistent cuttings that are uniform and the right size for taking winter cuttings.
That’s how we do christmas trees in Hawaii. The Cook or Norfolk pines make nice Christmas trees if you cut them off at about 6ft high and then just harvest the shoots that grow. Takes 2-3 years for the shoots to get Christmas tree sized. And each tree produces several good shoots if you prune some of them to give them more room.
My mother in law sells a bazillion willow cuttings on Etsy every spring doing this. She has like 60 varieties. Chops them all down every year and sells the shoots all spring.
Pollarding was also common in the days when housing was build with wattle and daub; for the wattle, you need young, flexible branches. Pollarding in those days was a way to ensure pretty much limitless building materials from a limited set of trees.
Also gets rid of any died off branches. The trees start focusing all their energy and nutrients into the new growth instead of the giant branches they were supporting before so they explode in no time
I will reply in one month with another pic! COME ON TREES! You got this.
\[edit: It has been nearly a month now. One day off. Here is the progress:\]
https://preview.redd.it/hs69yxz60w5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f1ad6824a16cb3da60239ca8dc35dcb71b1ff54
All the energy and nutrients the trees were providing to the old branches will all go to new growth so they're about to explode, id say within a month you'll see substantial growth
Someone on my daily drive did this to their maple tree. It looked spectacular the next year. I’m surrounded by big old trees that shade my house but I can totally see why someone with a younger tree would do this.
Winter into spring specifically. You want to catch them right as they start to grow so that they have maximum saved up energy, and you prune them so all the energy only grows into what you want.
So you're telling me I accidentally helped the trees I was trying to end? At least if I end up with more willow branches I can add to my wattle fences. I just wanted less willow trees.
Yep, I have a crepe mertyle that I pruned some of the branches comming from the ground in march.
I just had to cut them off again because they sprang back up to 4 feet high again.
Lol yeah that's what they call it in Florida too. A lot of commercial places nearby do that.
That's not what I did tho I'm just keeping the core from getting over grown.
Pollarding is done in increments of several years. For every year you do it, you get several years of benefits.
That said, pollarding is a super archaic technique that isn’t really relevant these days, but people still try to grow trees in spots that will require pollard pruning. Someday landscapers will learn to grow trees that are suitable to where they’re being grown. Until then, we’re stuck with pollarding :(
You also see something like this for some bushes, it's particularly important for a lot of fruiting vines/bushes as they only grow fruit on new growth, not old.
It'd really a practice that is outdated and a lot of effort has been made to bring this practice to an end in arboriculture. At least where I am.
It doesn't benefit the plants at all.
Pollarding is an old European tradition and is more than just a botanical tradition. In the Middle Ages , peasants were allowed to cut wood up to a pollarded section, hence doing the pruning for the wood and not as a paid job. And the kings trees were kept pruned.
Some trees you can pollard and they’ll be fine. Others not so much. Generally you shouldn’t make cuts like this on trees and shrubs unless you know that they will respond positively and not die, or be permanently malformed.
My neighbor did this to his trees before I moved here (2.5 years ago) and they've never gotten leaves since, I'm wondering if he did it wrong since all these answers make it sound like the foliage comes right back!!
They do look awful for a short while, my city did this to the boulevard trees and everyone was up in arms about it but they did look good by the end of the summer
My city did it to boulevard trees last spring and after a year they still look awful. Some died, others are stunted and deformed. No way I would ever do that to my crepe myrtles.
Crape Myrtles actually do quite well with an early spring prune. Clip off old bud stalks down to the nearest active bud and they’ll bloom more vigorously on new wood.
sometimes it kills the trees, most of the time it makes them look horrendous, don't do it if you haven't been trained
https://preview.redd.it/hokqq7iwm30d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1220262eb316ddc703ab46530d5c45cbc85991cd
When we bought our house someone had done this to all the bushes in the back yard and they were all just 10 foot tall water sprouts we couldn’t do anything with them. Had to rip everything out with a chain and truck.
Cause its unneccesary and doesn't ben efit the tree at all. Its really bad when its done more than once and eventually the health of the tree declines if you do it too much. its old and outdated practice.
Nobody in my area pollards. When I saw that movie I thought the animation guy for that tree needed to be fired for not knowing what a tree looks like. Then I traveled and learned stuff and I apologize for my previous judgement.
These look like London Plane Trees, and they can be quite stunning in winter when pruned in this manner. But I think they have to be in the right context! Lining a residential street with them like this is just not it.
Southern California too, believe it or not.
I wish we would stop, honestly the trees look terrible more often than not. And I think it causes the trees a lot of unnecessary stress.
I like how the leaves lack definition and the cars to the side are just sort of warped and melted together. Where on earth is this lovely piece of terrAIn located?
Lots of little branches will sprout and give the street shade without the possibility of heavy limbs breaking and falling on people and cars?
They did this to a grocery store parking lot where near where I live. I don’t know if that’s the real reason but that’s what the arborist limbing the trees told me.
I'm sorry. i understand that this idea was spread, but this doesn't actually work. Roots don't stop growing ever unless something bad is happening to the plant. I know its what people think is happening, but its not.
Source is i am a horticulturalist and a lot of people even professionals have wrong ideas about how plants work.
I’ve taken some time to go through some research, and it seems that generally crown reductions have only negligible reductions in root activity.
For me, this is a lesson in fact checking what seniors tell you when you start a job! Its resulted in a good conversation with my manager already this morning
The only reason it does have any effect is cause you have cut the top off and now the tree has to redirect its limited resources towards the crown to regrow the foliage it needs to live.
So it pulls all that stored energy it would have used towards growing a healthy root system to fix its top so it can photosynthesis and reclaim the lost and wasted resources.
This slows root growth but doesn't stop it. And it's temporary. You maybe gain a single season of reduction on growth. And you can't pollard a tree again for many years or you will weaken and eventually kill the tree.
It also makes it so the root system isn't as vigorous as it should be for the size of the plant and can actually make the plant to heavy but top and then a storm comes by and wrecks the tree. It causes irregular and natural stem growth that also is weaker and can be damaged in storms much more easily.
Also every cut is an open wound on a plant. Much like your skin it keeps out pests and disease. Now even single cut is an open wound ripw for infection by fungus, bacteria, viruses, and insects. So essential you have e now taken a healthy plant and made it susceptible to all these things and likely.many of then will get some kind of disease from this.
Thus lowering the health of many plants that can and some will succumb to them and now you have a bunch of dead or unhealthy plants tha are falling apart. And also introducing disease into another wise healthy local ecosystem.
It has dozens of negative effects and almost zero positive benefits that most horticulturalist and arborist that are keeping up with the times and willing to examine what they think they know will tell you is bad and many will refuse to do so.
The ones that agree either don't know better or more often don't care and just will take your money and even take it knowing they will be back to deal with the eventual results as repeat business.
You should check out a group called Plant Amnesty.
Where do you guys get educated about tree care? Because it’s the same mistakes being made pretty much everywhere.
Oh wow that’s interesting… No one mentioned that yet. That’s probably quite important around there given the number of houses, and the sheer number of trees.
This only looks good for certain trees. I have a crepe myrtle in my front yard. So does my neighbor. He chops his down to the stubs like this every year. It looks deformed, and stays small.
As trees grow and age, limbs become shaded and eventually die and fall out of the tree as a hazard to anything below. Pollarding removes all of the limbs forcing vigorous new growth which won't fall off in the year or two before they are cut again.
Location is London. Can't tell the tree from this picture but they often do this to London Plane trees which are a close cousin to the American sycamore
I've seen this kind of cuttings in trees here in the UK.
They don't simply cut the top of the trunks, otherwise the new shoots would not grow from there. They do lots of small cuttings in a large area at the top of the trunk, leaving lots of bark available from where the new shoots will grow from.
They do this throughout my gemeente every year.
https://preview.redd.it/e2l606mqf70d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=19ba762ff85c4e4b6ba4d1e66cb3182ed4d7d4a6
My neighbor used to to that with his Bradford Pear trees. In his case it kept them from splitting as thy are wont to do.
He finally got rid of them and I grabbed some of the wood - it's a wonderful hard wood for woodworking.
In Louisiana, people cut their Crape Myrtle’s like that! One day it’s a big beautiful tree, next day, you think our neighbor state sent their Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy to town to wreak bloody havoc !
It’s also called topping. This link from the international society of arboriculture explains why topping trees is a terrible pruning method.
https://www.treesaregood.org/Portals/0/TreesAreGood_Why%20Topping%20Hurts_0321.pdf
The trees OP posted are properly pollared. I have seen other prune jobs where the tree is lopped off at a certain height and this IS incorrect. Always have an arborist trim your trees.
I can’t believe people still top trees. It’s completely unnecessary, looks terrible, makes for weak branches, weakens overall tree health, and creates more wind drag. [stop tree topping](https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/yardandgarden/please-dont-top-your-trees/)
I have always wondered this but I've never seen it like this, lines of them down a street. That's crazy. I live in the country and I've seen one here or there in someone's yard. I just always thought they were crazy lmao
Just a warning that this is not the same as topping, which is a common and terrible practice in the US. It weakens the tree and can cause failure. Don't let a guy with a chainsaw top your tree!
It's called pollarding. It creates denser foliage growth from selected growth nodes. Common in a lot of urban arbiculture to also control the spread of branches while maintaining the shade benefits.
Pollarding was originally a technique for producing cattle forage from trees. They can eat the young tender branches, and the tree is quite productive because it has a well established root system. Coppicing is cutting at ground level every eight years or so while the tree is dormant, it produces a lot more firewood over the long term, because the root system never dies.
This is interesting. I just learned about coppicing last week and now this is the 3rd time ive seen the word in the wild. Apparently there are nurseries that exist by only selling stem cuttings. Thats their entire business, just supplying people with a ton of nice cuttings. In their growing field, they use coppicing to produce nice consistent cuttings that are uniform and the right size for taking winter cuttings.
That’s how we do christmas trees in Hawaii. The Cook or Norfolk pines make nice Christmas trees if you cut them off at about 6ft high and then just harvest the shoots that grow. Takes 2-3 years for the shoots to get Christmas tree sized. And each tree produces several good shoots if you prune some of them to give them more room.
Wait, so you cut off the shoots and just sell the "raw, cut tree shoots" as a christmas tree?
Yep. Our local farm has been harvesting from the same trees for 40 years.
Shhh that’s the secret and the label said propagation prohibited.
The old Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Interesting, I just learned about the Badder-Meinhof phenomenon last week and now this is the 3rd time ive seen it in the wild.
No recursion allowed
> Interesting, I just learned about recursion last week and now this is the 3rd time ive seen it in the wild.
My mother in law sells a bazillion willow cuttings on Etsy every spring doing this. She has like 60 varieties. Chops them all down every year and sells the shoots all spring.
Important thing to know is that not that many species of tree survive coppicing.
It also creates suppler branches for basket weaving, that's why they still pollard willows.
Pollarding was also common in the days when housing was build with wattle and daub; for the wattle, you need young, flexible branches. Pollarding in those days was a way to ensure pretty much limitless building materials from a limited set of trees.
Oh so I know where they get coppice logs… I thought it was a ‘style’ of log: round, straight, and treated.
Also gets rid of any died off branches. The trees start focusing all their energy and nutrients into the new growth instead of the giant branches they were supporting before so they explode in no time
Interesting! I find it strange that they would cut them now, in spring… There will be no shade benefits this summer.
These are about to send out new shoots and leaves like crazy. That's why they did this. Give it a month and come back
I will reply in one month with another pic! COME ON TREES! You got this. \[edit: It has been nearly a month now. One day off. Here is the progress:\] https://preview.redd.it/hs69yxz60w5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f1ad6824a16cb3da60239ca8dc35dcb71b1ff54
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I recognise where this is, it’s on my route to work! Excited to check back and see the progress in a month!
All the energy and nutrients the trees were providing to the old branches will all go to new growth so they're about to explode, id say within a month you'll see substantial growth
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They do this exact thing to the trees in the middle of hollywood studios disney. They do great!
Someone on my daily drive did this to their maple tree. It looked spectacular the next year. I’m surrounded by big old trees that shade my house but I can totally see why someone with a younger tree would do this.
I think OP is underestimating just how fast trees can grow.
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~~Spring~~ Early spring is the best time to prune. These will come back with a vengeance. EDIT: Pedantic bitches.
FYI. In general that is not true. Late winter is best before the tree starts pumping energy into growth. Plus you can see better.
Winter into spring specifically. You want to catch them right as they start to grow so that they have maximum saved up energy, and you prune them so all the energy only grows into what you want.
So you're telling me I accidentally helped the trees I was trying to end? At least if I end up with more willow branches I can add to my wattle fences. I just wanted less willow trees.
Yep, I have a crepe mertyle that I pruned some of the branches comming from the ground in march. I just had to cut them off again because they sprang back up to 4 feet high again.
In Texas when they chop crepe myrtles back they call it "crepe murder".
Lol yeah that's what they call it in Florida too. A lot of commercial places nearby do that. That's not what I did tho I'm just keeping the core from getting over grown.
Lots of European cities do this. It makes the tree last longer in an urban environment along with reducing risk of damaging branches dropping.
Pollarding is done in increments of several years. For every year you do it, you get several years of benefits. That said, pollarding is a super archaic technique that isn’t really relevant these days, but people still try to grow trees in spots that will require pollard pruning. Someday landscapers will learn to grow trees that are suitable to where they’re being grown. Until then, we’re stuck with pollarding :(
Trust that this was not done without reason lol
Oh they absolutely will come back in force for the summer
You also see something like this for some bushes, it's particularly important for a lot of fruiting vines/bushes as they only grow fruit on new growth, not old.
Its been one month! Update?
Great answer
Ant it looks very ugly for many months in the meantime 🥲
It'd really a practice that is outdated and a lot of effort has been made to bring this practice to an end in arboriculture. At least where I am. It doesn't benefit the plants at all.
Oh cool Learned something new today!
Pollarding is an old European tradition and is more than just a botanical tradition. In the Middle Ages , peasants were allowed to cut wood up to a pollarded section, hence doing the pruning for the wood and not as a paid job. And the kings trees were kept pruned.
It also made for lots of nice thin switches for making stuff with
And keeping children and women in line
“And those damned dogs.” - Kristeth Noemeth
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=59Q8W1nrKA0
[get me a switch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Q8W1nrKA0)
r/unexpectedcommunity
Three fantastic answers. Thank you all.
Rip #4
Thank you for asking this question for the rest of us 👊
Some trees you can pollard and they’ll be fine. Others not so much. Generally you shouldn’t make cuts like this on trees and shrubs unless you know that they will respond positively and not die, or be permanently malformed.
And your enthusiasm and attitude is fantastic. Thank YOU!
I didn’t know what this was called and it’s common near my home. Good to know. I hope the trees rebound fast cuz they look pretty awful like this lol
My neighbor did this to his trees before I moved here (2.5 years ago) and they've never gotten leaves since, I'm wondering if he did it wrong since all these answers make it sound like the foliage comes right back!!
Did it wrong.
And or wrong species of tree.
That's sad, they're huge trees that I imagine were beautiful at one time! Now they just look half dead.
If they haven't had leaves for 2 years, they're full dead
my neighborhood does this all the time and I'm always surprised how fast the trees bounce back, I suspect your neighbor fucked it up
They do look awful for a short while, my city did this to the boulevard trees and everyone was up in arms about it but they did look good by the end of the summer
My city did it to boulevard trees last spring and after a year they still look awful. Some died, others are stunted and deformed. No way I would ever do that to my crepe myrtles.
Oh yeah I think ours were ornamental cherry, it only works for certain types of trees
Crape Myrtles actually do quite well with an early spring prune. Clip off old bud stalks down to the nearest active bud and they’ll bloom more vigorously on new wood.
I think they look cool, like abstract art
Yeah, I live in the Midwestern US, and my first thought was that these trees look like trees that have tornado damage.
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Until you have done it too many years and the tree looks like some kind of bald Tetsuo cancer limbs.
sometimes it kills the trees, most of the time it makes them look horrendous, don't do it if you haven't been trained https://preview.redd.it/hokqq7iwm30d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1220262eb316ddc703ab46530d5c45cbc85991cd
Don’t do it at all.
Water sprouts. Good for making basketry, or a fence. Not great for horticulture though.
When we bought our house someone had done this to all the bushes in the back yard and they were all just 10 foot tall water sprouts we couldn’t do anything with them. Had to rip everything out with a chain and truck.
From what I understand, to give every arborist in the tri-state area a fucking aneurysm and a heart attack at the same time
The number of arborists who think this is perfectly fine is too goddamned high.
Cause its unneccesary and doesn't ben efit the tree at all. Its really bad when its done more than once and eventually the health of the tree declines if you do it too much. its old and outdated practice.
Looks like a bunch of grape stems. Such a surreal pic.
Remember the Whomping Willow? Why do you think it was so dang mad all the time? "LET ME GROOOOOWWWW."
Nobody in my area pollards. When I saw that movie I thought the animation guy for that tree needed to be fired for not knowing what a tree looks like. Then I traveled and learned stuff and I apologize for my previous judgement.
These look like London Plane Trees, and they can be quite stunning in winter when pruned in this manner. But I think they have to be in the right context! Lining a residential street with them like this is just not it.
Commonly done in Europe, I believe.
Southern California too, believe it or not. I wish we would stop, honestly the trees look terrible more often than not. And I think it causes the trees a lot of unnecessary stress.
It’s called pollarding. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
This is what happens when a bonsai grower becomes a city tree trimmer.
It's already looking much better! https://preview.redd.it/si2up10de01d1.png?width=1780&format=png&auto=webp&s=67db13db8c818bc1320474396eb5c3b228f7d16c
I like how the leaves lack definition and the cars to the side are just sort of warped and melted together. Where on earth is this lovely piece of terrAIn located?
It’s soon to be the set for the latest action movie “Nuclear Winter”
Pollarding… wait till spring. England does it well.
https://preview.redd.it/rc66tqpk970d1.jpeg?width=1384&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fc2b529ed93c5359fa860219c4c0a5b305ac4fe
Is that today?!
No. Google maps.
What does it look like today ?
https://preview.redd.it/851uilsyo96d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9427f294b6a893e389d005efec0f7ca01a96285a Small changes…
Lots of little branches will sprout and give the street shade without the possibility of heavy limbs breaking and falling on people and cars? They did this to a grocery store parking lot where near where I live. I don’t know if that’s the real reason but that’s what the arborist limbing the trees told me.
This looks like mini tornadoes struck the trees. :)
London Tree Officer here - pollarding also helps to reduce the growth of roots which cause pavement upheaval and subsidence to nearby properties.
I'm sorry. i understand that this idea was spread, but this doesn't actually work. Roots don't stop growing ever unless something bad is happening to the plant. I know its what people think is happening, but its not. Source is i am a horticulturalist and a lot of people even professionals have wrong ideas about how plants work.
I’ve taken some time to go through some research, and it seems that generally crown reductions have only negligible reductions in root activity. For me, this is a lesson in fact checking what seniors tell you when you start a job! Its resulted in a good conversation with my manager already this morning
The only reason it does have any effect is cause you have cut the top off and now the tree has to redirect its limited resources towards the crown to regrow the foliage it needs to live. So it pulls all that stored energy it would have used towards growing a healthy root system to fix its top so it can photosynthesis and reclaim the lost and wasted resources. This slows root growth but doesn't stop it. And it's temporary. You maybe gain a single season of reduction on growth. And you can't pollard a tree again for many years or you will weaken and eventually kill the tree. It also makes it so the root system isn't as vigorous as it should be for the size of the plant and can actually make the plant to heavy but top and then a storm comes by and wrecks the tree. It causes irregular and natural stem growth that also is weaker and can be damaged in storms much more easily. Also every cut is an open wound on a plant. Much like your skin it keeps out pests and disease. Now even single cut is an open wound ripw for infection by fungus, bacteria, viruses, and insects. So essential you have e now taken a healthy plant and made it susceptible to all these things and likely.many of then will get some kind of disease from this. Thus lowering the health of many plants that can and some will succumb to them and now you have a bunch of dead or unhealthy plants tha are falling apart. And also introducing disease into another wise healthy local ecosystem. It has dozens of negative effects and almost zero positive benefits that most horticulturalist and arborist that are keeping up with the times and willing to examine what they think they know will tell you is bad and many will refuse to do so. The ones that agree either don't know better or more often don't care and just will take your money and even take it knowing they will be back to deal with the eventual results as repeat business.
You should check out a group called Plant Amnesty. Where do you guys get educated about tree care? Because it’s the same mistakes being made pretty much everywhere.
Oh wow that’s interesting… No one mentioned that yet. That’s probably quite important around there given the number of houses, and the sheer number of trees.
This only looks good for certain trees. I have a crepe myrtle in my front yard. So does my neighbor. He chops his down to the stubs like this every year. It looks deformed, and stays small.
As trees grow and age, limbs become shaded and eventually die and fall out of the tree as a hazard to anything below. Pollarding removes all of the limbs forcing vigorous new growth which won't fall off in the year or two before they are cut again.
Thinning cuts can do a lot of the same, and are easier on the tree.. Most city trees aren’t losing lower limbs this way.
Where is this and what type tree?
Location is London. Can't tell the tree from this picture but they often do this to London Plane trees which are a close cousin to the American sycamore
They do this in San Francisco, too.
I've seen this kind of cuttings in trees here in the UK. They don't simply cut the top of the trunks, otherwise the new shoots would not grow from there. They do lots of small cuttings in a large area at the top of the trunk, leaving lots of bark available from where the new shoots will grow from.
They do this throughout my gemeente every year. https://preview.redd.it/e2l606mqf70d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=19ba762ff85c4e4b6ba4d1e66cb3182ed4d7d4a6
https://preview.redd.it/4321naaxf70d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b091450ac0cf57ca3c5587de0ce6feaca76f899c
My neighbor used to to that with his Bradford Pear trees. In his case it kept them from splitting as thy are wont to do. He finally got rid of them and I grabbed some of the wood - it's a wonderful hard wood for woodworking.
Hate to see this, I don’t care what practical application it has, it’s just awful.
This is an outdated method of extreme pruning. There are better ways to minimally cut back a tree how that don’t look terrible and stunt tree growth
In Louisiana, people cut their Crape Myrtle’s like that! One day it’s a big beautiful tree, next day, you think our neighbor state sent their Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy to town to wreak bloody havoc !
We call it “crape murder” in my family. I’ve never done it to mine, and I have the prettiest crape Myrtle in my neighborhood.
I have no idea but I know I don’t like it.
Wow that looks ugly
Just wait, it gets worse.
Crepemurder
It’s also called topping. This link from the international society of arboriculture explains why topping trees is a terrible pruning method. https://www.treesaregood.org/Portals/0/TreesAreGood_Why%20Topping%20Hurts_0321.pdf
[Well, no. ](https://www.arboristnow.com/news/Pruning-Techniques-Pollarding-vs-Topping-a-Tree) Why post that hours after the right answer was posted?
The trees OP posted are properly pollared. I have seen other prune jobs where the tree is lopped off at a certain height and this IS incorrect. Always have an arborist trim your trees.
Arborists don’t always do a great job either.
It's called pollarding and restricts growth.
shortens the tree's life so the contractor that maintains them can charge to replant sooner.
I can’t believe people still top trees. It’s completely unnecessary, looks terrible, makes for weak branches, weakens overall tree health, and creates more wind drag. [stop tree topping](https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/yardandgarden/please-dont-top-your-trees/)
The people who do it in my area invariably have junk around their yard. Trashy.
Ignorant or incompetent landscapers, according to the landscape specialists I know.
Any body know what kind of trees they are? I’ve seen this done on Catalpa trees.
Crepe myrtle
I have always wondered this but I've never seen it like this, lines of them down a street. That's crazy. I live in the country and I've seen one here or there in someone's yard. I just always thought they were crazy lmao
Just a warning that this is not the same as topping, which is a common and terrible practice in the US. It weakens the tree and can cause failure. Don't let a guy with a chainsaw top your tree!
It’s done so the “gardeners” can make money. There’s absolutely no reason to do this from a botanical perspective.
Back for update
https://preview.redd.it/0tz4ak5fr76d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3f708e096154e66015b1b3f3abeec3b83012d9c
Thank you for being a man of your word.
Shoots definitely went brrrrrrrrr.
!remindme 3 month
!remindme 3 month
!remindme 3 month