Tree surgery – why we do mind

Trees represent something primal in some of us.  Whilst working on some lovely Lime trees in Canterbury recently, we spent quite a lot of time reassuring, and indeed comforting, a passerby who was concerned about the work.  

We were pollarding the trees: a common method of pruning Limes, which has been in practice for hundreds of years.  Pollarding is a good way to manage the crown, and pollarded Limes are common in urban areas where safety considerations are paramount.   

Pollarding helps to promote new growth on a regular basis.  Where the tree is pollarded as part of a regular cycle and wound decay is spotted and managed, it can actually help the tree live longer; the tree is kept in a semi-juvenile state, reducing the risks of an oversised crown to both the tree and to all those around who admire it.  Without this kind of regular work, the tree might even have been felled.             

But the passing pedestrian’s reaction was not an unusual one, and it got us thinking about what trees mean to us.  Misunderstanding about our role and the value we can bring to the health of the tree in future must be a factor – some of the more casual members of our profession, shall we say, have not always helped the cause.   

Perhaps we feel such empathy for trees because they represent for some of us the small ecosystems in which millions of irreplaceable stories take place each day.  In some respects trees are human like with their own forest families; they seem to be able to show feelings as well as diseases; they differ from us with their lifestyle but unlike us they rarely damage environment that they live in.

We hope that we’ll be able to go back and admire the Canterbury Limes for many years to come!