Weeping Pear: can they be reduced in height?

I've written about the intricacies of managing a small Weeping Pear a few times, and today I had an interesting follow-up question:

"I planted a weeping pear 20 years ago in my London front garden.  It is now too big for me to reach the higher branches and I need to get a pro in to do it for me. I'm terrified of finding someone who doesn't know how to prune it this way, having seen some mushroom style pruning that I really don't want... any advice?"

This is a very real problem, and to illustrate it, here's a photo from my "Crimes Against Horticulture" folder, left.

This belongs to a lady for whom I work a few times a year: I turned up one day to do the autumn clearance of perennials, to find that her beautiful Weeping Pear had been slaughtered by "the bloke who cuts the grass".

Not a proper gardener, then.

He had, as you can see, pudding-bowled it.

The best you can say - with gritted teeth - is that it is at least neat and tidy, and it is smaller than it was. 

Personally I think it looks awful: some plants look good clipped into shape - Box, comes to mind. Or Yew.

But the whole point of a Weeping tree, whether it be Pear, or Willow, or anything else (you can get weeping Beech, and Ash, amongst others), is to enjoy the waterfall effect of the weeping foliage.

Not to run the hedgetrimmers over it and turn it into a mushroom.

How to avoid this sort of disaster? When you make an enquiry, with a gardener, or an arborist, ask them what tools they will use to do the job. If they say hedgetrimmer, put the phone down. In fact, if they say anything other than "hand tools and a ladder", put the phone down. 

When we (me and my arborist buddy) do Weeping Pears, we use no power tools at all: we use long-reach hand tools - "secateurs on a stick", as we sometimes say. One of us works from the ground, while the other one goes up the ladder, and that way we can ensure that we keep the tree balanced - there is a lot of conversation between us, of the "up a bit, left a bit, yes, that one," type.

The routine for these larger Weeping trees is exactly the same as in the article - first you get out the Three Ds - Dead, Diseased and Damaged.

This entails a lot of work inside the canopy: we put the ladder up very close to the trunk, and sometimes we actually climb up inside the tree, in order to get to the dead material, and there is usually a surprisingly large amount of it.  Often, the Client will ask us what we are doing, as they expect us to prune the outside first, and they wonder why we are taking so long to get going - until they notice the large pile of dead wood under the tree!

This is always an issue with "weeping" trees - the outside branches are leafy and healthy, because they get the sun, whereas the inner canopy dies off but, unlike a normal tree, these dead branches are hidden from view by the "umbrella" of the canopy. 

However, dead material is bad, because it rots, and the rot can spread to the healthy branches: also, dead branches tend to drop out of the tree at inopportune moments, so it's always best to get rid of all the dead stuff, from time to time. 

Having cleaned out the canopy, we then  start on the outside, having already looked at it from all sides, and agreed with the Client as to how much they want taken off. Usually it's a simple case of removing the upward-sprouting growth, to take it back to the height it was last year: and often we need to remove a couple of larger branches to return to a more balanced shape, if it has been growing more on one side than the other. Which is often the case.

When dealing with small ones, I like to keep the branches at least a foot clear of the ground, so that the foliage can swing in the breeze, rather than laying limply on the ground. 

With larger trees, I like to have the lower canopy sufficiently high for the owner to be able to mow underneath it without getting their eyes poked out.

You might be wondering what happened to the pudding-basin tree: well, here it is

 Three years later, it was just starting to regain the weeping form.

So you can see that it's not a total disaster, if you let someone loose with the hedgetrimmers: but it will take three years to grow back.

In fact, it was the following year before we felt that it was ready for some proper pruning: and it has been "properly" pruned every year since then, and it's now lush and shapely once more.

And, to get back to the original question, finding someone who will do it properly will mean asking a few direct questions, and stating categorically that you don't want it turned into topiary.

And the advanced answer is that, once you find that person, you can ask them if they think it is possible to lower the overall height of the tree. This will mean them selectively cutting out, carefully, some of the uppermost large branches. 

But be warned, because most Weeping Pear are grafted trees, they will have to leave a stub of the pruned branch, otherwise the new growth might not be weeping - if they cut into the graft area, they might prompt some dormant buds, from the non-weeping rootstock tree, into action. This means that it's better to cut to a point where there is a downward-growing branch.

Oh dear, so difficult to explain in words... let's try a simplified cartoon.

 Here's a very simplified weeping tree, and the red line shows the total overall height.

The highest point is on the branch to the left, so that's the one we want to reduce. 

We could cut it off just where it joins the trunk, couldn't we: the black line represents where to cut - approximately! (I'm not too good at this image manipulation lark...)

 But oh, that leaves it rather unbalanced.

Yes, it will regrow, but it will take a couple of years to fill in that gap.

Obviously, in real life, there will be more than one main branch, it won't be quite as stark as this, but you see the point - taking off a major limb can drastically change the shape of the tree, and can leave it unbalanced, which might lead to problems later on.

A better compromise, then, is to reduce that left-hand branch, rather than removing the whole thing:

Again, the black line is the approximate cut point - just above a good strong downward-growing branch.

The blue line shows that you have made a reduction in height overall, but if you look at the centre of the tree, you can see that the highest point is now that middle branch - so we have retained some of the left-hand branch, but have still gained the same reduction in height as if we had removed the entirety of the left-hand branch.

This is a much better way to do it: the tree is less unbalanced, we have lowered the height, but there isn't such a hole in the canopy on the left hand side.

 As a finishing touch, I would also remove just a little from the far right-hand side, to make a better overall shape.

And I'd adjust the lengths of a couple of the longer branches - again, just a little, enough to change it from being top-heavy on the right, to being slightly shorter on the right.

That's quite a long answer to a short question, but as you can see, when dealing with ornamental trees, it's not just a case of hacking off a couple of branches.

Well, not if you want to end up with something which looks like a real tree, not a poor butchered thing! 

Hopefully this has answered the question - a) ask lots of questions of any professionals you are considering calling in:  b) make it very plain to them, how you want it done, and how you absolutely do NOT want it done: and c) yes, the overall height can be reduced, in order to bring it back within your own reach, and you will then be able to prune it yourself for another few years.

 

 

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