When heavy winds blow, major limbs — and sometimes entire trees — fall. The primary reason for this is poor structure, which results when two or more branches grow closer together in a V-shape. The bark that forms between the branches is called “included bark.” It works as a wedge and weakens the union between the branches.

Landscape trees differ from forest trees: they are open grown and don’t compete for light. Properly planted, they grow vigorously with dense crowns. Left untrained, they can develop poor, tight junctions that eventually fail due to included bark and decay. This is especially dismaying because it happens when the trees are maturing and developing a full crown, ruining the tree just when it is fully functioning in the landscape. The aim of structural pruning is to identify and remove the affected limbs or reduce competing limbs so they are subordinate to the main leader, or central stem. The goal is a mature tree with wide branch angles and a central leader. 

The best approach is to prune trees when they are young and developing so that faulty structure can be nipped in the bud, pun intended. But if the tree is mature, we can step in and install cables to help support the main junctions, thus correcting its structure before the damage is done. 

We train our arborists to perform proper structural pruning of young, developing trees so that they can continue to mature and provide shade and sustenance for future generations. As with so many things in life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.