Hudson Valley, NY Tree Trimming & Pruning Service
People often confuse tree trimming and pruning. In reality you can immediately tell if you’re dealing with true arborists or just cowboys because while anyone can offer tree trimming, it takes a specialist with knowledge of how different tree species grow throughout the year to be able to offer proper pruning. Trimming is just cutting away unwanted branches and boughs - like a haircut for your tree. Which is great except that unlike a haircut badly done trimming can affect the health of your tree and lead to long term damage or even regrowth where you don’t want it which makes it necessary to trim again sooner and more often than before. Clearly we don’t just come along and cut; we also offer an advisory service to suggest the best way to encourage the growth you want and after we have done our work we take care to clear away any unwanted dead wood.
Pruning for Growth
It may seem back to front to cut away parts of a tree in order to make it grow more but that’s very much how it works - only of course we don’t just cut any part nor do we cut at any time. While people often think that fall is the time to prune trees the reality is that it depends on the type of tree but typically the best time is at the end of winter before the spring growth spurt as that’s the time that trees heal their wounds the fastest. Pruning makes for a healthier tree but is also a way of planning its shape and orientation to best fit with its immediate environment. We also prune back any diseased, damaged, or dead branches to reduce the strain on the tree and enable more of its resources to be focused on the healthy growth.
Raising
One of services we provide is crown raising where the crown of the tree is now so low that it interferes with power lines, passers by, or even autos. The trick here is to carefully trim those lower branches in such a way that we don’t just hack them off but encourage the tree to grow taller and grow new bottom branches at a higher level to avoid the problem coming back year after year.
Thinning
Once again it may seem counterintuitive but a really dense leafy canopy may not be the best for the plant’s growth and may discourage fruit if that’s your goal. By selectively cutting back some of the crown growth we can make it possible for more light and more air to penetrate to the heart of the growth which will lead to stronger, healthier growth for the tree as a whole.
Reduction
Some trees simply get too big. Or cast shadows that interfere with the light coming to your windows or the growth of other plants. So we reduce them, not by hacking away but by timing the reduction to the correct time of year to control height or width.
