Trees need to be trimmed for a variety of reasons. They may have branches that are crossing or rubbing against each other or have grown to the point where no air can circulate around them. You might trim your tree just to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Still, even judicious trimming is an injury that the tree must work to heal. Though healthy trees can recover from over-trimming, trees that are nearing the end of their life, are sick, infested or struggling with a long dry spell can be killed by it. Here are ways to avoid over-trimming your tree and stressing it to a point where it can’t recover.

Don’t Use Dull Tools or the Wrong Tools

Before the job of trimming even begins, you need the right tools. These may be a hand pruner, a lopper or a saw. Whatever tools you use, they must be clean and absolutely sharp. Tools that are dull and dirty only crush branches and invite diseases and pests. For your protection, have an arborist sharpen them. They should also be appropriate for trimming tree branches. Hatches and axes are really not made for this sometimes-delicate job.

Don’t Take Off Too Much of the Crown

The crown of a tree defines the shape it takes as it grows. Professional arborists are careful to trim no more than 20 percent of a tree’s crown, even if it hasn’t been trimmed in a long time. To trim more of the crown subjects a tree to suckering. This refers to weak limbs that sprout from the trunk or what’s left of the crown. Suckers don’t produce fruit and simply steal the tree’s resources.

Don’t ‘Lion-Tail’ the Tree

This happens when you strip out the inside branches of a tree and trim the rest until there’s foliage only at the ends of the remaining branches. Their resemblance to lions’ tails gives the practice its name. While it might be pleasing to look at, it’s a bad practice. Problems that it causes include:

• It makes the tree unstable.
• It makes the tree vulnerable to breakage.
• Lion-tailing also makes it more difficult for the tree to photosynthesize since so many leaves have been removed.
• The practice causes suckering.

Call Us When You Need Your Tree Trimmed

Though you may be tempted to remove a lot of the limbs of a tree that hasn’t been trimmed in a while, over-trimming a tree is a bad practice. For expert help with tree trimming, call our professional arborists at Curran Tree of Providence, RI.