Winter Pruning Keeps Our Street Trees Growing Healthy and Strong
By: The Tree Commission
If you've seen orange-vested volunteers with hand tools hanging around town lately, they were probably working to keep Mount Rainier's trees growing healthy and strong. The all-volunteer Mount Rainier Tree Commission aims to visit each of the city’s street trees every winter. We limb up branches that hang over sidewalks and streets, address structural problems and try to ensure that trees have a single, strong growing tip. This structural pruning is essential if we want our trees to reach their full potential and provide us maximum benefits. City staff help too, by providing tools and promptly picking up pruned branches.
Trees grow on their own, you might say, so why all this fussing? Trees do grow fine on their own — in forests. In cities, however, we ask trees to do something they did not evolve to do: grow alone, without neighbors. In such situations, trees tend to send limbs and branches outward, not upward. This weakens their structure and puts them in the path of pedestrians, cyclists, cars and trucks, where they're likely to be damaged. Ultimately it leads to shorter arboreal lives.
In short, trees in cities are confused, and they need our help. Structural pruning encourages trees to devote energy to the upper branches that will ultimately form the shady canopy we all value. And while pruning cuts do create temporary wounds, trees also shed branches naturally and have thus evolved ways to quickly repair these wounds. You can see nicely sealed-over pruning cuts on street trees throughout Mount Rainier.
It's worth reflecting on why we want trees in our cities in the first place. Trees soften the look and feel of the city; they help take the hard urban edge off. Think about how you feel when you're in an asphalt- and concrete-dominated landscape such as the Queens Chapel shopping center plaza, versus somewhere leafy and green, like the food forest park. Of course, in modern times, few of us live in forests. But the more forestlike we can make our cities, the better off we will be — physically, mentally and, some would even say, spiritually.
At the same time, it's important that trees don't impede us from getting around, or put us, our homes or our cars at risk. If you see a street tree that's blocking a sidewalk or street or creating a safety hazard, contact Mount Rainier Public Works.
Finally, a request: Please do not attempt to prune a street tree yourself. Without proper training, you're likely to do more harm than good. (Unauthorized pruning of public trees is also illegal.) If you would like to join the team and become an authorized tree pruner, please contact email the Tree Commission. We're winding down our work for this winter but will need plenty of help when we start up again in December!