Caring for the plants in your yard is a constant endeavor in learning. One resident asked for advice on Reddit about what happened to their neighbor's trees.
Sharing two photos with the r/Arborist page on Reddit, a poster asked, "Is this a massacre or good practice?" The original poster said their neighbor "was advised to pollard the trees as it might be 'accident' prone in the future."
The first photo shows several large trees with their top branches and canopies cut off. The second photo shows what the trees originally looked like. The trees gave the yard a ton of shade and privacy, and the trees looked healthy and lush.
Pollarding, according to Horticulture Magazine, is a pruning method where "young trees and shrubs are cut back at a desired height on the main stem or trunk. … Pollarding maintains the plant at a desired height, and today this method is often employed to prevent urban trees from hitting overhead utility wires." However, BBC Gardeners' World Magazine adds that this technique should only be done on young trees.
What this post appears to show is something called tree-topping, a technique that is intended to shorten trees and make them safer, but this seems to be a misguided endeavor. According to Penn State Extension, "In reality, tree-topping harms trees, shortens their lives, and creates dangerous or hazardous trees that will surely drop branches in the future." Additionally, it explains that topping a tree will cause it to either grow back rapidly to repair itself or slowly die.
Trees are beneficial for many reasons. They filter pollution, improve human health across many metrics, and can help mitigate the urban heat island effect.
Redditors were rightly upset by this improper pruning.
One commenter said: "I said 'oh no' out loud when I saw the second picture. Might as well rip out the trees now, since they'll die anyway. This is never good."
Another added: "Massacred. I'm not an arborist and even I know that's not a pollarding job. Those things were topped. My guess is she may well lose them long-term."
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"There is a way to properly reduce the height of a tree. But it takes someone with the knowledge of proper tree trimming," wrote someone else.
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