Pruning an oak tree (genus Quercus)

Here we were pruning an oak tree.

“Reduce back to previous reduction points, maintaining shorter branches; crown clean (remove deadwood and epicormic shoots); remove all cuttings”. That’s what we’d agreed with the customer. It was a relatively big task: two days for three men. Two climbers in the tree for much of the time, with one on the ground. Beast of a tree. Good thing we got to it before it came into leaf! Here is the result of our reducing an oak tree. We’d given it the same treatment six years previously.

On seeing the photos, my friend said “that’s given it a haircut!”. Classic…

That’s a yew at the base of the oak. And a cypress half visible on the right in both pictures, which we may end up removing before it takes over the whole garden. There was a lot of squirrel damage to the bark of the oak, particularly near the cypress, which had even killed off some branches. It seemed they had been getting into the oak from the cypress, pesky little critters.

Did you like our work pruning an oak tree? If you would like to discuss how we can help with your trees, hedges, or climbing plants, please get in touch.