Why not topping
It makes the tree more dangerous, not less.
This is the only page on this site where the word appears, and it appears here so that anybody who has been offered it can read why the answer is no.
- 01
What it is
Cutting every branch back to a height, as though the tree were a hedge. It is quick, it is cheap, and it is still offered by plenty of companies in this city.
- 02
What happens next
The tree responds to losing its crown by pushing out a mass of fast, weakly attached shoots from the cut ends. Within five years it is taller than it was, denser, and attached far less securely.
- 03
And then
The cuts are too large to seal, so decay enters the stubs. You now have weak growth attached to decaying wood, over the same house you were worried about.
- 04
What we do instead
Crown reduction: shortening branches back to a growth point that can take over as the new leader. It costs more, takes longer, and the tree looks like a tree afterwards.
- 05
If a tree is genuinely too big
Sometimes reduction is not enough and the honest answer is removal and replanting with something that fits. We would rather say that than top it and leave you a worse problem.