Hi I'm looking for some advice. I am a professional gardener and this is in the UK.
I have just turned up to one of my customers to find they have had some tree work done (I didn't know they were doing this).
I know I'm not an arborist but am very well read and a knowledgeable horticulturalist. This seems like a complete hack job to me but I would like a proper opinion before I say something to them?
From my understanding silver birch require little if any pruning, and should have a sensitive approach if there is to be any carried out. I have a picture of the birch beforehand where it can be seen in the background ( I shaped up the weeping birch in front). They have removed an enormous amount of the canopy and it'll just be ruined now right?
Additionally they have hard pruned two cherrys. Again cutting back really far. On the smaller one there is a messy cut and they have taken out the leading stems which will just result in vigorous growth and a potential failure point? Also I would think it's a bit late in the season for this hard pruning of cherry with the risk of silver leaf disease? It's getting down to 4/5 degrees at night and getting wetter.
Please correct me if the above is wrong? Want a qualified opinion on this before I tell my customer.
Thanks a lot
by AloneInFire
22 Comments
Yeah they messed up hiring that person. Created many sites for decay to begin
Awful work
Terrible
Yes for many reasons (I’m not an Aborist i’m a student of botany please correct me)
– Looks like they removed 2 major leaders that might have been almost as tall as the tree, unless it was infected with something i cant see a reason to do that.
– You’re meant to cut diagonally and close to the node so that water doesnt settle on the flat parts, rot and kill the tree.
– There are many kinds of pruning, some of which is thinning out the bottom, or limiting growth, or pruning dead things, this was none of them.
This exemplifies “hack job”.
Butchered. Clearly got a reputable company in to that.
Both those trees should be felled now. Totally utterly ruined.
A few more shitty cuts to be complete, but pretty close to perfectly awful
Look, every arborist has made mistakes, every single one. But, geez, there is more bad here than I did in my entire life. Wow.
The birch might bounce back a bit if the cuts are tidied up properly, but cherries often really hate being pruned. Even if it’s cleaned up and recovers, that is never going to be a beautiful tree and could well start sending up suckers all over.
It is very disrespectful of your client to have this work done without consulting you if you have been working for them for a while. If you are a competent gardener, you should be able to pick your clients and depending on how they respond to your comments, you might want to see this as the signal the end of your relationship with this client.
I’m UK (not that it matters for this level of shittery) and can confirm this is awful awful awful.
Unless the tops of those birches were fundamentally structurally messed up, then taking them out was one of the worst things you could do. More than likely, the “cutters” just didn’t want to climb any higher.
And judging by the cuts themselves, they had no idea what they were doing. There’s tears, there’s stubs, there’s bark nips, there’s even an unfinished step cut. Jesus!
Neither of these species like being handled so roughly.
Though, while you’re probably right about the cherry being pruned a little late, it’s not as egregious as the rest and not a hill I’d die on.
Who did that coombes forestry
Ruined.
They just killed that tree. What a disappointment
That’s some ugly tree work right there.
Jesus Christ. Put that thing out of its misery. 😂🙈
UK arborist here. Yeah they had a traveller or smackhead do this for sure, wrong time of the year for it as well. Seen worse though can’t lie!
This pruning method is not necesserily always bad and it has its place. Its place is “I’m in the middle of cutting down the whole tree for firewood in managable pieces”.
Look at how they massacred my boi
Yep lol
Thanks for all the comments already.
I am newly self employed having recently started my own gardening business after many years of being an employee in horticulture. So needed a bit of reassurance that what I was seeing was in fact horrendous before I felt confident enough to have the chat with my customer.
Makes me wonder how these people manage to get away with this sort of thing? Surely one hack job like this and that would be the end of your cutting days!
Its gon diiiie