The one job we turn down
We don't top trees. Here is why.
It is the most requested thing in this trade and the fastest way to ruin a tree. If you were about to pay someone to do it, read this first.
The one job we turn down
It is the most requested thing in this trade and the fastest way to ruin a tree. If you were about to pay someone to do it, read this first.
What it is
Topping means removing a tree's leaf bearing crown, usually with cuts made partway along a limb rather than at a branch juncture. You will also hear it called hat racking, heading, or rounding over. It is quick, it is cheap, and it looks decisive.
The leaves are how a tree feeds itself. Strip them and the tree has to live on whatever energy is stored in the trunk, limbs and roots while it scrambles to replace the canopy. That is not recovery, it is survival mode, and a tree in survival mode is far more open to disease and insects.
The cuts themselves are the second problem. A tree can close a wound made at the right place. It cannot close the open stubs that topping leaves, so each one becomes a way in for decay.
And the regrowth that people point to as proof the tree was fine is the weakest part of all. Those shoots are attached at the surface rather than anchored in the wood, so in ten years you have a taller tree made of limbs that break more easily than the ones you paid to remove.
What to do instead
If a tree genuinely is too big, too close to the roof, or shading something it should not, it can be made smaller properly. Limbs get shortened back to a lateral branch big enough to take over as the new leader. The tree keeps a natural shape, the cuts are made where it can close them, and the regrowth is attached properly.
It takes longer
Every cut is a decision about which lateral takes over. That is the work you are paying for.
It costs more
Up front. It costs far less than topping once you count the removal that topping eventually forces.
It can be repeated
A properly reduced tree can be maintained at size for decades. A topped tree cannot.
If someone quoted you topping
Cutting a tree's leaf bearing crown off, usually with indiscriminate cuts made partway along limbs rather than at a branch juncture. It is sometimes called hat racking, heading or rounding over.
The regrowth is the tree surviving, not the tree recovering. It is spending stored energy to replace the canopy it lost, which puts it into stress and makes it more vulnerable to disease and insects. The new shoots are also weakly attached and break more easily than the limbs they replaced.
Not undone. A skilled arborist can sometimes restore a topped tree's structure over several years of corrective pruning, but you never get the original tree back.
Crown reduction. Limbs are shortened back to a lateral branch large enough to take over as the new leader, so the tree keeps a natural shape and can close the wounds. It takes longer and costs more than topping, and it is the difference between a smaller tree and a dying one.
Ask whether they are ISA certified, whether that person will be on site, and ask them to put the words crown reduction and topping in writing so you know which one you are buying. The City of St. George's own guide to selecting an arborist says plainly not to hire someone who promotes tree topping.
That is what the free estimate is for. We will look at it and tell you whether it needs reduction, ordinary pruning, or nothing at all this year.