A client's mom watched me prune her oak and told me I was cutting too much live wood

I was out in Eugene last week doing a crown reduction on a big coast live oak, and the homeowner's mom came out and just stood there watching. After about ten minutes she pointed at a branch I was about to cut and said, you're taking off more green than you need to, that branch is feeding the whole south side. I felt kinda stupid at first (she wasn't an arborist or anything, just an old gardener). But I stopped and looked harder, and she was right - I was so focused on shaping the canopy that I wasn't paying enough attention to live crown ratio. I ended up leaving about 15% more foliage than I would have normally, and the tree actually looked better balanced. Has anyone else had a customer point out something that made you rethink your cuts?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly3381mo ago

An old gardener" is just wild, how did she know the tree's structure that well?

christopher_hunt1mo ago

Oh, that's a great question. I wonder if maybe she spent a lot of time around old gardens and orchards growing up. Some people just have an eye for how things grow and what shapes trees naturally take over time. But the real thing that gets me is how she could describe so many specific details about the structure just from a quick glance. Did she say she used to work as a landscaper or something like that? Because knowing trees that well usually comes from years of hands on experience, not just casual observation.