Evergreens bring balance, texture, and ongoing appeal to your New England landscape. We know that homeowners embrace and appreciate their evergreen trees and shrubs due to their ability to provide year-round color and privacy.
For that reason, it’s important to do what you can to keep these assets looking and performing their best.
Evergreen tree trimming will be one of those important tasks that needs to be handled properly in order to maintain your plants.
In this article, we’ll talk about some of the important things you ought to know about trimming evergreen trees. Everything from the timing of this task to how it’s performed is critical to getting it right!
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Can You Trim Evergreen Trees?
Best Time to Trim Evergreen Trees in New England
How to Trim Evergreen Trees
Choosing Tree Care in Southern NH, Northeastern Massachusetts, and Southern Maine
Can You Trim Evergreen Trees?
Yes, you can trim an evergreen tree. In fact, it can be very beneficial to prune an evergreen.
As with any pruning that you’re doing, you want to make sure that you’re performing this task properly. Pruning at the right time and using the right techniques will be a key to your success.
Removing dead, diseased, and dying branches from your evergreen trees is important to support their overall health and appearance. Pruning evergreens in New England also helps maintain their shape and control their size.
Best Time to Trim Evergreen Trees in New England
It’s important to know when to trim evergreen bushes and trees in order to maximize your success.
The best time for evergreen pruning is generally in the late winter to early spring, before new growth begins. Although evergreens do not go fully dormant like deciduous trees, their growth does significantly slow down during the winter, making this a less stressful time to perform pruning.
Generally, you will want to avoid pruning evergreen shrubs in the fall, as you might set them up for winter injury. Pruning an evergreen tree or shrub in autumn will stimulate new growth and this is not ideal as we head into the frigid winter months.
How to Trim Evergreen Trees
When pruning evergreens, the goal should be focused on trimming away diseased, dying, or dead branches. You’ll want to avoid cutting into old wood as cutting a branch in the middle will not produce new growth.
Also, do not prune branches flush to the trunk as this can be harmful. You do not want to hurt the tree trunk or remove the branch collar. This contains specialized cells that protect the tree trunk from decay or disease.
Performing “selective pruning” (removing individual, select branches) is the best way to help maintain the natural shape and form of your evergreen.
It’s always important to use clean and sharp tools when pruning evergreen shrubs and trees. Also, if you are dealing with a diseased evergreen, you’ll need to disinfect the tools between cuts to avoid spreading the disease to healthy parts of the tree.
If your evergreen tree does have a disease, there are some evergreen disease treatment options, including fungicides. A tree health care expert can determine if this is necessary.
In many cases, a tree will bounce back from disease on its own. It depends on how severely ravaged the tree is.
Choosing Tree Care in Southern NH, Northeastern Massachusetts, and Southern Maine
We know that trees can be complicated, but you aren’t on your own in figuring it all out. At Seacoast Tree Care, we are here to provide guidance and professional services that will help you best care for your New England property.
We offer tree pruning services, including pruning evergreen trees and shrubs. While we do have a pruning minimum (we won’t come out to prune just one evergreen shrub), homeowners usually have plenty of work that they are eager to have professionally handled on their property.
By choosing professional pruning, you can let go of the worries and know that these services are being handled properly. Getting the most value out of your evergreens does boil down to caring for them the right way.
When you make a wise choice in tree services, you’ll ultimately take an important step in protecting the value of your property’s trees.
Ready for safer and healthier trees at your New Hampshire, Maine, or Massachusetts home? Request your consultation and get a free quote for tree pruning services. We service properties in and around the Seacoast Region like Stratham, NH, Kittery, ME, and Haverhill, MA. By making a wise choice, you’ll know your trees are in good hands.