tomthetreeman
Participating member
- Location
- Rhode Island
\'Corrective\' pruning
So here's the deal. About 2 years ago, I pruned this gigantic 150+ yr old European Beech for a client of mine in Providence. The tree is absolutely gorgeous, and its canopy dominates a huge area. Customer was thrilled with our work, we did a minor house clearance, deadwood and general crown cleaning, plus we raised it up for pedestrian clearance in two spots.
Less than a week later she calls me, horrified, and says that another tree company, hired by her neighbor, came in and butchered the tree. The neighbor has some HUGE radio antennas in his yard, perhaps for contacting E.T, who knows? I thought these things were relics, but apparently this guy still has some use for them. The cuts were pretty much all made to clear the antennas, but for whatever reason the cutter just went to the property line, disregarding proper pruning altogether. Anyway, the company that did the work is not known for this type of hacking, and when I called them, the owner was apologetic, and met me at the site the next day to survey the damage and figure out how to possibly fix this situation.
Long story short, two years goes by and nada. After many calls and discussions about how we could schedule the work so myself and the client could be there, he never contacted either of us, so I changed the plan. I caught up with him recently and told him that I would do the work and send him the bill, which he agreed to (There's a first time for everything I guess!). I went out yesterday to prune out the bad cuts, etc. These pictures show just how quickly F. sylvatica dies back/decays from internodal cuts. We did what we could, but it is still such a shame that this happened to such an awesome tree. To make matters worse, the work was done on the WSW side of the tree; an exposure that beech trees should not have opened up. I plan to reinspect the tree periodically to see how the recovery goes.
Here are a few pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomthetreeman/ElmhurstBeech#
Thoughts?
-Tom
So here's the deal. About 2 years ago, I pruned this gigantic 150+ yr old European Beech for a client of mine in Providence. The tree is absolutely gorgeous, and its canopy dominates a huge area. Customer was thrilled with our work, we did a minor house clearance, deadwood and general crown cleaning, plus we raised it up for pedestrian clearance in two spots.
Less than a week later she calls me, horrified, and says that another tree company, hired by her neighbor, came in and butchered the tree. The neighbor has some HUGE radio antennas in his yard, perhaps for contacting E.T, who knows? I thought these things were relics, but apparently this guy still has some use for them. The cuts were pretty much all made to clear the antennas, but for whatever reason the cutter just went to the property line, disregarding proper pruning altogether. Anyway, the company that did the work is not known for this type of hacking, and when I called them, the owner was apologetic, and met me at the site the next day to survey the damage and figure out how to possibly fix this situation.
Long story short, two years goes by and nada. After many calls and discussions about how we could schedule the work so myself and the client could be there, he never contacted either of us, so I changed the plan. I caught up with him recently and told him that I would do the work and send him the bill, which he agreed to (There's a first time for everything I guess!). I went out yesterday to prune out the bad cuts, etc. These pictures show just how quickly F. sylvatica dies back/decays from internodal cuts. We did what we could, but it is still such a shame that this happened to such an awesome tree. To make matters worse, the work was done on the WSW side of the tree; an exposure that beech trees should not have opened up. I plan to reinspect the tree periodically to see how the recovery goes.
Here are a few pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomthetreeman/ElmhurstBeech#
Thoughts?
-Tom
