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[Anonymous]

Hi

• I returned from work today and was horrified by what the council had done to our mature (over 30 years)weeping willow tree.I will enclose photo . Please can you let me know if this is bad for the tree . I’m extremely upset and worried .

 

[STWillo.02]

Lots of nice pictures, that’s nice to see what we’re talking about.

I’ve seen pollarding on willow, this is actually one of the best-done examples I’ve ever seen! Usually they tend to remove much more, and much less regularly; so you end up with huge trunks and branches that look completely cut off.

In the work done here, it’s admirable: they left a few elegant structural branches, and even kept many secondary and third-level branches.

I imagine they pruned more on the side where there’s housing as they’re liable in case of branches falling on private property. They’d have to pay for fence damage if a falling branch hit it.

On the other side, they left many smaller branches which will immediately give the tree a natural feel.

Willow can take much, much worse than this. This work I find artfully done!

It always looks shocking during the first weeks, but growth will set in and you’ll find the tree more beautiful than ever, with a lighter, airy feeling!

I guess they’ll keep going down the row of trees during the next few days.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply . Do you know how long it will take to recover ? and will it ever resemble a weeping willow again ? It was a perfectly healthy tree , was this extreme pollarding necessary?

[STWillo.02]

Sorry it took me a long time to answer. Got pretty busy here.

This year already it’ll grow many, many new shoots that’ll easily reach 1-2 m long. That alone will hide the trunk well.

By the end of next year a few of those shoots will overpower weaker ones and become dominant. That’s when the new structure of the tree will emerge. It’ll already look a lot like a flourishing weeping willow by then, though branches won’t yet sweep down to the ground quite yet.

By year 3 and 4 these large branches will already be too large to wrap your hand around. Some branches will already reach to ground level, I wager.

Normally they’ll have to prune it again when branches get larger than 10-15 cm, in around 8-10 year’s time.

You can actually see stumps of older pruning: this isn’t the first time the tree has been pollarded. And it was just as extreme, too, with large branches cut back to the trunk. So you’ve got part of your answer there, too: since you thought it had never been pollarded, you’ll have that same impression again soon!

 

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