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It may be winter and your trees are in hibernation, but that doesn’t mean they should be neglected. Even now, pruning your trees can significantly improve their longevity and help the aesthetic value of your landscape. Pruning may be the last thing on your mind right now if you’re a property manager, but having a regular pruning schedule is absolutely critical to optimizing the health and looks of the exterior spaces of your property.
Here are some of the key reasons why you should be pruning your trees, along with some other important information.
Timing
Timing is definitely key when it comes to pruning your trees. It’s generally best to prune trees during the late fall and winter. During this dormant season, pruning doesn’t harm your trees as much. Even so, it’s important to realize that not all trees behave in the same way, so you can’t treat them all uniformly. Before pruning any of your trees, make sure you do your due diligence or contact a professional landscape contractor to make sure your tree branches are dealt with in the correct way.
Beauty
One of the biggest benefits of pruning is the effect it will have on the aesthetic look of your landscaping. Pruning allows you to really shape the tree and help guide the direction of its growth. This is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways of improving the appearance of your exterior grounds.
More Than Enough Is Too Much
When it comes to pruning, it’s better to take off too little rather than too much. First of all, if you do take off too much of a branch, it’s impossible to undo, and branches grow slowly. More importantly, pruning is stressful to trees, and too much pruning can end up severely damaging or even killing your tree. As the old saying goes, “less is more” is truly the best way to go with tree pruning.
Safety First
Thinking about skipping your pruning? Think again. Without adequately pruning your trees, you’ll likely have dead tree branches that can pose a major safety risk to your property, to animals, and even to tenants. The act of pruning itself can actually be quite dangerous too. If you have a substantial job of pruning to do and you’re unsure of any component of the work required, contact an experienced landscaping professional to handle the work for you. It requires training and experience to make sure that no injuries occur when pruning trees.
Pruning Not Only For Beauty But For Health
We mentioned the aesthetic value of pruning trees, but did you know it’s also a necessary aspect of helping to keep your trees healthy? Think about it. If a tree has dead, decaying, or diseased branches, it’s a sign that something is wrong. Whether it’s a pest, an infectious disease, bad weather, or bad sunlight, a dead branch is telling you something. These dead and dying branches still utilize resources as well, so removing them will help to redirect resources and nutrients to the healthier parts of the tree.
From a structural standpoint, you can also influence how the tree grows by pruning correctly. For example, a tree growing at an angle may end up having a weight distribution issue in the future, or it may end up encroaching on a structure on your property. Proper tree pruning can ensure something like that doesn’t happen.
Conclusion
As you can see, tree pruning is far from a simple task. Pruning is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a yard or landscape, and at Earth Development, we take an enormous amount of pride in the trees we prune and maintain throughout the properties we serve.
If you’re looking for tree pruning services in Iowa, along with a wide array of comprehensive landscaping services, contact us for more information now!
