Loading…
19
Spent 3 years topping every oak on my route, one ISA class in Chattanooga finally showed me why that was killing them
I used to top everything. Every silver maple, every oak, every sweetgum. Boss said it made them bushy and bushy meant happy customers. Then last February I sat in a 2 day class in Chattanooga and the instructor pulled up a slide of a topped oak that had hollowed out 8 years later. The cut leaves a stub that can't seal, so rot walks right down into the trunk. I had a client in Signal Mountain whose oak I topped in 2019. Drove by it in March and half the crown was dead. I knocked on her door and told her I did that. She was nice about it but I felt sick.
I know a lot of guys in this trade still defend topping because it's fast and the customer likes the look right after. I disagree. We can do better. How do you all bring it up with a boss or a client who asks for it by name?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
tara_patel13d ago
I topped a red oak on Lookout Mountain in 2017 that I now wave at like an ex I wronged. The line I use on clients is "the tree grows back ugly and then it dies" and honestly it works better than any slide. My old boss still won't say the word "topping" out loud, we call it "the T word" like it's a swear.
1