Restorative Pruning After the Ice Storm

The recent demand we have experienced due to the ice storm has been both overwhelming and humbling. We greatly appreciate everyone’s request and patience as we deal with the crisis at hand. We have been and will continue to prioritize hazard and safety issues first and focus on restorative pruning and non-emergency removals as things settle down.

Restorative pruning is a skill. Just because someone has a saw and a truck does not mean they are qualified to correctly prune storm damaged trees – or trees in any state of existence.

Your trees just went thru quite possibly the most stressful experience of its existence-and survived. So certainly you would not choose to hire just anyone to ‘prune’ and restore their damaged branches. The process of restorative pruning is crucial and can be the difference between long-term recovery and short-term decline and downright ugliness.

Restorative pruning is a skill. Just because someone has a saw and a truck does not mean they are qualified to correctly prune storm damaged trees – or trees in any state of existence. Please do not just hire whoever knocks on your door or who is available the soonest and cheapest. Trees can and often will recover from storm damage but they do not always recover from an unskilled ‘tree cutter’. Be patient. Remember that quality takes time and skill.

What is the goal of the restorative pruning? Often times it can take years and multiple pruning applications to fully restore a tree. Every species is different in the way it responds to injury and some can tolerate heavy pruning and major foilage loss better than others. Furthermore, we have learned from ice storms that end-weight reduction pruning and the installation of dynamic cabling has proven itself again and again to help prevent major branch and whole tree failure.

Please do not remove your trees out of fear. Become educated about your trees and have them assessed by an ISA certified arborist. Again, if they just survived a catastrophic ice storm followed by a windstorm and are still standing and in decent shape then what more are you asking for? Unfortunately, it is somewhat predictable to drive thru town and see the overwhelming amount of BAD pruning and unnecessary removals taking place as a result of this storm. While some trees do not belong in our urban environment, condemning them all is just ignorant. Again, many trees will recover in time with proper pruning and patience. Please contact us to see what we can do for your trees.

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