Just Don’t Do It

There comes a time when one might realize that a plant has outgrown the space in which a human planted it. The human has several choices to rectify his/her mistake: prune the plant or remove it. It seems that not enough people consider the second option.

Behold the latest pruning catastrophe in my area: a long, double row of ‘Bradford’ pear trees that have been hacked to deal with their overgrown size. I have seen this group of trees many times and they were absolutely overcrowded. However, I think the better approach would have been to remove every other tree (note: the best approach would have been to remove every one of these useless pest trees).

There are at least two other properties within a 5-mile radius that have treated their pear trees in the same fashion over the last 10 or years (and they look horrible during the 4-5 months when they don't have leaves). I wonder if they used the same tree service (Would some tree services actually refuse to do this? I hope so.). I don’t believe that this treatment fits the definition of pollarding which implies that regular pollarding maintenance will be followed.

Please take this as a reminder to research the growth of your plant before you plant it. The internet is the perfect tool to find the mature width and height of any commonly grown plant.



And if you should find that your plant has outgrown its space, please consider a more appropriate method of pruning or removal.