Tree Pruning and Trimming

Tree pruning is the process of removing live or dead branches to improve the health, safety, or aesthetics of the tree.

At Lemur Tree Care, our expert arborists maintain ANSI A-300 standards when they prune and trim a tree throughout its life cycle. We want to improve the health and longevity of the trees on your property and take a systematic approach to our pruning process. We never get up in a tree and just start hacking away, everything we do is for a reason.

We always want to inform our customers about what we are doing to a tree and why we do it. Here are some common practices and terminology we use when pruning and trimming a tree:

Deadwooding – Deadwooding refers to the removal of any 2” or larger diameter branch that is dead or decaying. This is done to prevent injury should the branch ever give way.

Topping – Topping is for ice cream, not trees. Topping is the indiscriminate cutting of tree branches to stubs or to lateral branches that are not large enough to assume the terminal role. Topping is often used to reduce the size of a tree. Topping stresses trees, leads to decay, and can lead to unacceptable risk. At Lemur Tree Care, our arborists would never top a tree as it could potentially jeopardize the structural integrity for a trees canopy.

Crown cleaning – Crown cleaning is the process of removing all branches over 2″ in diameter. Typical goals of crown cleaning include increasing the uniformity and aesthetics of the tree, and balancing the visual weight of the crown. Crown cleaning can help improve turf growth as a thinner crown will let more sunlight reach the ground below.