Can/should this oak be saved?

[john meehan]

As people have said. A good reduction would take a lot of the weight off. It looks like the peice that came is the bit that was most over your drive?

 

Maybe a staged reduction with fracture pruning woukd let it develop a new smaller crown over say the ten years? It would be great for the wild life.

 

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[AA Teccie (Paul)]

As people have said. A good reduction would take a lot of the weight off. It looks like the peice that came is the bit that was most over your drive?

 

Maybe a staged reduction with fracture pruning woukd let it develop a new smaller crown over say the ten years? It would be great for the wild life.

 

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:thumbup1: ...sounds a good option.

[john meehan]

:thumbup1: ...sounds a good option.

Thanks mate

 

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[Fisherman]

There is still one large branch over the drive and we can't move the track as on the other side of it is a pond of about a third of an acre. If it wasn't in our garden I wouldn't hesitate to just take some weight off and see what happens. I've just got in touch with another tree surgeon for a second opinion.

[drinksloe]

John suggestion above is a good 1 BUt the fact it will be good for wildlife could become a problem in the future.

 

Would imagine it could become an ideal bat roost, it bats used it it would them become protected and u'd need licensed bat workers to come out and inspect the tree (£££) anytime u wanted to do work on it.

Not sure wot happens if the tree becomes dangerous if that overrides bat protection.

But at moment bat laws are all wrong far too much protection and not enough encouragement, (too much big stick and not enough carrot) i made some bat boxes to put up in my small wood and was going to do other tree works to make them better for bats, but don't want the hassle if bats start to use them and i then want to do work on the tree.

Nothing against bats but the way legislation is ur mad to encourage them, which is wrong

[john meehan]

There is still one large branch over the drive and we can't move the track as on the other side of it is a pond of about a third of an acre. If it wasn't in our garden I wouldn't hesitate to just take some weight off and see what happens. I've just got in touch with another tree surgeon for a second opinion.

You could always brace the offending branch? Giving you some piece if mind over your drive.

 

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[Duncansimpson]

Bracing def not an option as it's split to the ground. Pollarding may kill it, felling definitely will.

You could take the branch o/h your drive off and leave the rest if there no target for when it fails.

I would still pollard though.

[sloth]

John suggestion above is a good 1 BUt the fact it will be good for wildlife could become a problem in the future.

 

Would imagine it could become an ideal bat roost, it bats used it it would them become protected and u'd need licensed bat workers to come out and inspect the tree (£££) anytime u wanted to do work on it.

Not sure wot happens if the tree becomes dangerous if that overrides bat protection.

But at moment bat laws are all wrong far too much protection and not enough encouragement, (too much big stick and not enough carrot) i made some bat boxes to put up in my small wood and was going to do other tree works to make them better for bats, but don't want the hassle if bats start to use them and i then want to do work on the tree.

Nothing against bats but the way legislation is ur mad to encourage them, which is wrong

After your good advice before I'm a little surprised at this. I wouldn't worry about bats and future work, all tree workers should be carrying out a scoping survey immediately before working on any tree (no extra costs there), and yes, if a tree poses a danger that overrides the bats legal protection.

Where in the country is this tree?

[Fisherman]

Herefordshire

[agg221]

If it was mine, I would look to keep it, so long as it was not going to hit anything important if it went (or was reduced to size where it wouldn't). I would regard the risk as small enough to outweigh the enjoyment I would have from it being there. It will never be a stately tree again, but it would become gnarly and interesting, which personally I like.

 

I wouldn't pollard it as oak doesn't sprout out fast enough to re-grow the crown quickly and hence tends to die. It does retrench well though, so I would go for a heavy reduction using drop-crotch pruning, on the grounds that it wouldn't rot out from the exposed heartwood on the high sections before it was brought down further. The aim would be to form a new, much smaller inner crown which was gradually worked back to, much like natural retrenchment. I would probably plan to spread the work over 10-20yrs (really!) and do it in stages 3-5yrs apart.

 

Given the immediate need to reduce sail, I would go hard on the first one. I have drawn lines on the attached where I would look to cut, to reduce height, weight and leverage. It might look better aesthetically if fracture pruning was used but this is personal taste.

 

Personally, I would regard formation of bat habitat etc as a good thing, but then I like veteran trees with all their interesting imperfections.

 

Do bear in mind that I am not a professional in this field and my experience is much more with preserving veteran fruit trees but certainly it has been my experience (both with fruit trees and from observation of veterans of other durable species such as oak) that they will remain standing with a surprising amount of damage, so long as they are kept short, levers are minimised and they are fairly well thinned.

 

I would be very interested to see whether David Humphries comments on this thread (and what he thinks of my pruning strategy and locations!).

 

Alec