Therapist, Not THE RAPIST, for Your Trees

Therapist, not The Rapist.  Sometimes having auto spell correction go awry can get people all panicky.  Isn't it funny that the two terms are complete opposites? Your trees all need therapy.  Think of me as a tree therapist.   If something isn't right,  I'll just cut it off and that will be the end of that problem.  If you want drugs for your trees, call someone else.  I only deal with surgery and moral support.  Most people actually do kinda rape your trees, albeit unwittingly, and you don't want that.

Most people really don't know what it takes to help trees be their best.  They usually don't pick the right trees for the ongoing relationship.  Then, they neglect them or completely mismanage them until they see things aren't right.  Imagine if their family members were so abused.

At that point, they usually hack at the tree themselves with little education or proper equipment or get someone equally or even more unqualified  and less attached to hack it up for them.  This usually makes things worse.  It can take several to many years to overcome a single hacking festival.  I figure for every poor pruning job, there's at least 2 years needed to recover once the trauma ends.  3 or 4 years of mistreatment means once it gets on the right track, it might be 5 to 10 years before it can look good again.   And maybe never if it was really screwed up.

Some people think trees can take perfect care of themselves,  but this isn't true and I'll explain why in a future post.  On the other hand,  bad pruning is worse than no pruning at all.  Even worse, some people hire arborists to do the needed work.  Most arborists are good at diagnosing problems and fixing them to an extent.  But they usually aren't very good at making trees look great.  They're more like a mechanic working on your transmission, when what you need is someone who has the visual skills and finesse of someone who paints the car.  Or like a proctologist when mostly what you need is a plastic surgeon.

That's where I come in.   I do what they call aesthetic pruning.  This is what you apply to pretty much every tree for which the purpose is to look good and be healthy, not to make juice or sweet, crunchy nuts for you.

You don't just prune a tree every few years and expect it to look great.   The best trees are maintained throughout most of the year.  Ultimately this doesn't take much longer, and can save time in the long run.   Trees that are maintained properly will avoid losing branches or toppling in a big storm.  And managing a tree while it's 20 feet tall rather than waiting until it's 50 makes everything much better and safer.