Category Archives: Pruning

A Derelict Estate Transforming Into a Japanese Garden

Do you have an over-mature landscape that you’re not sure what to do with? Rip it out or repurpose it? How about gradually transforming it into a Japanese style garden? In this video, we encountered a sixty plus year old landscape that has been neglected for years, and we accepted the challenge of refurbishing some very large, old shrubs by pruning them in a Japanese style. From this auspicious beginning, the ecstatic homeowner is planning to add more Japanese-themed aspects (like pines and a moss garden) into the existing landscape to create her dream garden.

Pruning Coast Pines in the Japaneses Sukashi Style

This is a one of a kind tutorial on pruning two needle pines in a Japanese (sukashi) style from the beginning to the finished product. This video is packed full of information that will help guide you as you tackle pruning the illustrious pine tree—the top tree in the Japanese garden. Please enjoy! —Nathan Lawrence the Arborist (or Niwashi, Niwa Mori) and Treevangelist

Examples Bad (&%$#!) Pruning!

P—leeeaze don’t ever hire someone to “prune” your trees, no matter how good the price, if they do the kind of work shown in the following pictures!

I took these photos in neighborhoods where we have been the dominant tree care provider for decades, but to save a little money, the trees’ owners hired either El Cheapo Tree Service or FlyByNight & TakeUr$and Run Tree Service to “prune” their trees, and look what they got!

Sadly, these trees are not only painful to look at, but this can also harm the trees, devalue the property and engender the scorn and ridicule of knowledgeable and discerning neighbors.

The ISA Certified Arborists of Good News Tree Service, Inc. of Wilsonville WILL NEVER put their name on this kind of tree butchering! NEVER! EVER!

And what’s even sadder, is that the property owner probably thinks that this looks good. Ugh! (I wonder what their spouse thought of it, when they came home from work? I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the house when that happened! I can just imagine pots, books and end tables flying through the windows…)

Going from bad to worse…
Worser…
Getting worser and worser…
Really bad!
Really really bad!…
The worst of the worst!

There’s a saying among professional arborists: “Don’t call bad tree pruners tree butcherers. Butchers are highly trained professionals!”