While the word landscaping typically conjures images of lawn maintenance: perhaps a lawn mower mowing a lush green lawn, the lawn is more the canvas for your landscape design and installation. The stars of the show? Trees!
Trees add vertical interest, can come in multiple shapes and sizes, and provide shade, oxygen, a home for cute critters, and even food. So what have you done for your trees lately?
If you can’t think of the last time you performed tree maintenance, isn’t it about time you gave back? Don’t act like the kid in The Giving Tree! Instead, let’s talk about what your trees need and how you can treat them Divinely.
Tree Needs
Your trees are alive. And like every living thing, they have needs that allow them to thrive. The most basic are food and water.
For plants, sunlight helps them create their food, but you also will need to supplement that with suitable soil. Fertilization can be beneficial from time to time. Divine will be able to tell you whether and how often to fertilize your trees.
Similarly, we’ll help ensure your trees get the proper water, sunlight, and protection by placing them correctly and setting up a watering schedule or irrigation system.
While all these are necessary, the primary service your tree and shrub maintenance routine is most often missing is pruning and trimming. So, for the remainder of this blog, that’s where we will focus.
Why Do Your Trees & Shrubs Need to Be Pruned & Trimmed?
Several benefits to pruning and trimming your shrubs and trees go beyond curb appeal. While trees certainly look better when well taken care of, more importantly, they are also healthier and less likely to create problems for your home and property.
Trimming vs. Pruning
But first, some semantics.
Trimming and pruning are often used interchangeably in conversation. And while that likely won’t cause you any problems in your day-to-day life, there is a difference between the two.
Trimming involves shortening and clipping your shrubs and trees. Typically trimming is done for aesthetic appeal though it also benefits tree health when done correctly. Trimming compares to getting a haircut.
On the other hand, pruning involves removing dead and unhealthy branches and parts of a plant. Pruning is more like surgery. Typically, minor surgery, like, for instance, a wart removal, but not something you’d go to a stylist for.
Both trimming and pruning are essential to the health of your trees and shrubs. And both, when done improperly, can have disastrous effects.
Tree and Shrub Health
The most important reason to include pruning and trimming in your shrub and tree service is the health of your plants. Landscape design and plant installation are fun, but maintenance is vital for maintaining plant health.
By removing unhealthy parts of trees, pruning helps to prevent the disease from spreading. Meanwhile, trimming shrubs and trees periodically encourages growth and keeps plants more vital. Therefore, the need for both trimming and pruning should be assessed regularly and scheduled whenever necessary.
Avoiding Property Damage
Coming in second, if not tied for first in the reasons to trim and prune your trees and shrubs is avoiding property damage. We’ve all seen pictures or videos of a tree’s effect on a house when they collide. (If not, look above). It’s not pretty.
Properly caring for your trees makes losing a tree to strong wind less likely. Furt
hermore, pruning unhealthy branches or removing pieces of a dangerously situated tree can do a lot to, if not eliminate, strongly mitigate the possibility of tree damage to your home or other property being a part of your future.
We are available for stump grinding and removal if you lose a whole tree.
Curb Appeal
I’m going to drop an obvious bomb on you. Are you ready? Trees and shrubs look better when trimmed and pruned.
While not the most crucial reason for your plant’s maintenance, it is the one people are most likely to notice. Unfortunately, because the aesthetic appeal is so obvious, it makes many people think that’s the entire purpose of trimming. As a result, they may try to do it themselves.
Improper Trimming & Pruning
You can do anything as long as you don’t have to do it right! Unfortunately, it’s easy to make mistakes when trying to do your plant maintenance. And trimming too much of a tree can damage it. Likewise, pruning can mean missing something essential and letting disease spread in your trees and shrubs.
Why You Should Hire an Expert
We all know an armchair expert or a Monday morning quarterback. But we live in a specialized society – and that’s ok! In fact, it’s a good thing.
Specialization allows us to develop more things – like science and cheese whiz! And at Divine, we specialize in landscaping and plant care.
We know what we’re looking for, and we know what we’re looking at. Because we’re experts, you get better quality work done more quickly.
Would You Cut Your Own Hair?
Experts – can’t live with them; don’t want to pay them. But consider this: Even if you could do as good of a job as a professional, what is your time worth? Wouldn’t you prefer to spend your time with your family, making money, or just eating cheese whiz?
And when it comes to quality, would you cut your own hair? Most of us would say no. And here we are talking about only cosmetics.
Perhaps a better question would be: would you perform your own surgery? I certainly hope the answer is no.
Divine Inspiration?
We hope we’ve inspired you to take better care of your trees and shrubs and to better understand the importance of seemingly small steps to take each season.
We would love to be your source for all your tree care and landscape maintenance needs. Remember, a nice landscape isn’t just beautiful; it’s Divine