Dismantle/Fell

Tree is completely removed. Sometimes this can be done by making the correct directional cuts at the base of the tree and ‘felling’ the tree all at once. Other times, the tree must be taken down in sections and dismantled. Felling is normally done when there is plenty of space for the tree to land and dismantling is usually carried out when there is the potential to damage anything surrounding the tree.

Pollard

Pollarding is done to stimulate re-growth on a tree. This is done by cutting branches back to the main stem. Doing this leaves the tree looking bare but in the spring the adventitious buds that were laying dormant spring (pun intended) to life. Usually, the reasons for pollarding are to reduce the canopy by a lot as well as encouraging re-growth.

Coppicing

This is similar to pollarding and often confused with it. The difference is that when you coppice a tree you cut it down to ground level to shoot from the ground. The procedure of both coppicing and pollarding cannot be carried out on all trees and is usually done on fast growing trees.

Crown reduction

This technique reduces the crown (canopy) of the tree. It is advisable to only reduce a tree by a maximum of a 3rd. Any more and the tree can suffer greatly. Crown reductions are done to reduce the size of a tree whilst still keeping it’s immediate aesthetic value.

Crown thinning

Thinning is a procedure that removes branches from a tree without reducing the crown size. The branches are usually removed nearer to the main stem and well inside the perimeter of the crown to avoid changing the shape. Crown thinning will allow more air and light to penetrate the remaining branches and in so doing, improve the quality of these branches. This procedure is commonly done to fruit trees to produce a better quality fruit.

Dead wooding

Sometimes referred to as crown cleaning, this is a method used to remove any branches that have died. These branches are referred to as dead wood. This is done to reduce the possibility of a branch falling and causing any damage. This is especially important in a public area or over paths and roads.

Shaping

There are times when parts of a tree can grow at a faster rate than the rest of the tree giving it an unusual shape or an unwanted shape. Whilst not always being the issue, this is usually because this area of the tree is getting more light and because trees are positively phototropic (branches reach towards the light). Shaping a tree will get the tree to look like how it would under normal circumstances.

Natural Target Pruning

Sometimes it is only necessary to remove a small number of branches and these can be specifically pruned.