OK, I call it bad pruning.  But really, it’s not bad pruning…it’s more like “uneducated” pruning.  Because now that I’ve been educated at the Desert Botanical Garden (thank you, Scott and Co.!), I do better!  That’s why I’m passing this along…to prevent the unnecessary slaughter of baby trees.  🙂

In my previous post about bad pruning, I showed an extreme example of a pruning mistake.  Hopefully, my neighbors won’t recognize themselves because they’re lovely people.  But if they do, they can at least tell their landscaping crew what NOT to do!

Here’s a great example of Witch’s Broom.  See where the good, strong branches  stop…and out sprout tiny little twigs?  That’s Witch’s Broom.

By the way, Witch’s Broom is also a plant disease, but with symptoms that look similar to mistletoe.  That’s not good either.

Here’s the best pruning tip ever:  DON’T DO THIS!  This isn’t the greatest photo…sorry ’bout that.  But you can see where a landscape crew was asked to “trim” the trees and they pretty much denuded this one and the others on the property…foliage and all.

Any guesses as to how this will grow back in…if, in fact, it DOES grow in?  Anywhere a cut was made–and this poor tree had had this procedure before–will sprout spindly little twigs that look like a witch’s broom.  Imagine a hundred little brooms all over this tree.

The really unfortunate part (aside from the fact that it’s killing the tree) is that this mature tree, which should require very little pruning, now needs constant pruning to deal with all the little twigs.  Sigh…