Ottawa Tree Pruning

Ottawa Tree Pruning Service

After our certified arborist assesses your tree we may recommend pruning in order to mitigate hazards, or promote the long term health of your tree.

Every urban tree needs pruning at different stages of its life. Typically, the urban forest is unlike a forest in a natural ecosystem. In a mature forest with a dense canopy, trees will develop more “bolt” wood, meaning most of the vegetative growth is acropetally at the apices of the tree as opposed to trees grown in an open environment that develop more laterally and radially. The latter growth habit is typical of a tree that has poor scaffolding of parent limbs, and often multiple leaders that form weak unions called inclusion (picture those little wooden chop sticks you get for take out. Pretty easy to pull apart, aren’t they?) Also, because of less competition, lateral limbs tend to over develop, don’t support their own weight and develop pressure cracks (axial shear along the length of a limb). Unfortunately, the faster growing, softer hardwoods tend to be the most noxious in this regard.

Keep in mind a tree is a fixed object like a house that is at the mercy of its environment. It needs to transfer all its loads (dynamic from wind, static form its own weight and snow) down to the foundation (ie. roots). Proactively pruning a tree right from the nursery can prevent a lot structural problems down the road.

ISA best pruning practices are essential for all pruning cuts and are made proximal to a healthy union where embryonic meristematic tissue can rapidly begin compartimentalization.

After assessing your tree, we make our decision to prune based on making your tree safer, healthier, and ultimately more valuable. We inform our decision on how healthy the tree is, knowing that each pruning cut is a wound.

Pruning can be broken down into categories.

Pruning lateral branches and lateral limbs that are equal in size to the laterals that remain in order to allow for greater light penetration, air flow, and accommodate future growth without confluent branches rubbing.
Removing dead branches and limbs along with branches that have fruiting fungal bodies back to a healthy union. It is essential that limbs that have signs of fungal infection be pruned immediately. Some fungi such a Ophiostomatoid fungi if not detected and sanitized early enough can become systemic in the vascular system and kill the tree.
Structural pruning implies removing a parent limb in order to promote better architecture. Quite often parent limbs and other lateral limbs are demonstrating acute unions without any bridge between them. These limbs grow around one another, become kidney shaped in cross section as opposed to a cylinder shaped. This type of structure is called an inclusion and if left to develop increases in length as the parent stems gain radial girth. Because this structure is so week, axial shear below the inclusion almost always occurs if left unchecked. Furthermore, because there is no bark bridge in between the two parent stems water weeps in between and eventually causes rot.
Ideally, inclusions are identified early on in young trees in order that the corrections are small.
In nature, trees are never shaped and turned into globes, but sometimes home owners wish to subordinate the canopy spread and restrict the tree to a small space for aesthetic and functional reasons.
This should be done judiciously since removing the terminal bud from branches will certainly stimulate vegetative growth proximally causing a lot of infill, crossing and confluent branching. It short it becomes a high maintenance tree.
The healthiest approach to shaping is with pruning loppers and pruning back to a healthy union, as opposed to using hedging shears.
Heading is when the pruning cut removes a stem that is 3 times the size of laterals that remain. This is usually done to reduce the height or redirect vertical growth. Some trees don’t tolerate this practise, other trees like fruit trees are quite resilient and is common practise to promote low lying fruit.
Vista pruning is usually done when low branches are blocking line of site either for car traffic, mowers or visual appeal. Sometimes it is enough to prune lateral branches. Other times low limbs are pruned back to the main trunk.
Clearance pruning is done to give roof lines, driveways, and utilities 6-10ft of clearance. Again, this can usually be achieved by pruning low lateral branches and watch the limbs spring up, but sometimes clearance pruning is achieved by removing low limbs and pruning back to a healthy union.

Book Now

Connect with Tree Care Experts

Excited to start your tree care journey? Share some details with us and we'll get back to you promptly. We're eager to assist you with all your tree care needs!

Top-notch Tree Services

Ottawa Tree Pruning