Some people! beech reduction, too much?

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

So the guy says take as much as you can off the tree, a nice purple beech, cut it as hard back from nieghbours as poss.

 

Apparently i took too much off! I removed less than a yard of chip and four barrow loads of small diameter logs for his fire!

[Johny Walker]

nice ladder

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I love that ladder!

[Stephen Blair]

i would say its too much, there is no doubt about the skill it takes to do what you did, but sometimes a climber can get consumed in how they want a tree to look, i did what you did when i first started on 2 monster cherry trees that had never been touched, i was asked to do as much as i could with out killing it, i gutted them right out and i thought they looked amazing, the rest of the residents came back and went nuts as did the boss, hey ho what was i too do, i remember going back a few years later and they looked great.

[gibbon]

How much would you say was reduced in terms of leaf area? Just curious as opinions often vary on that quite considerably

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

You missed the point!

 

I would have cut off less, but he specificaly demanded AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, without harming the tree, he also didnt want to do it again for another ten years!

 

This client was so adament that he knew best the spec wasnt finalised until we turned up to do the job, he was that difficult!

 

When clients make the spec, thats THIER doing, the work I did is bang on what he ASKED for! but he wasnt 100% convinced!

[Heads up]

Don't see any issues with it myself, but you must know the customer is always right:001_rolleyes:

 

It'll be back soon enough

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

gibbon, I reckon thats 50% of leaf area, but it was done previously and showing great vigour and vitality, with all old wounds well occluded, thers wasnt much growth internal in the lower crown due to regrowth shading it out, and hence the phot tropic lower limbs, which I have a twisted back for lim walking on snowy branches. Yes it was logged in the book for those into that kinda thing!

[Stephen Blair]

i didnt miss the point i just told you a little story to not hurt your feelings as much, so i will put it bluntly, you like making skeletons out of trees and there is only a couple of twigs left per limb, i cant see that tree doing to well in the future, the ones you have left will just peel off in the future as they get bigger and then i cant see any internal growth coming from beech so it goosed, too much off

[Dan Wilson]

Considering how much you've taken off I'd say that looks pretty well spot on. And if the guy asked you to reduce it as much as possible and he's complaining about that then he'd probably have complained no matter what you did. Nice job I reckon.