Everyone says stop topping trees, but the 3 maples on my street in Boise came back fuller after the city trimmed them back hard 18 months ago | Arborists - Guest Forum
What were they actually cut back to though? Like did the city take them down to the main trunk or just thin out the inner branches? Because those are two very different things and people lump them together as "topping" when they're not the same at all. The research on this stuff mostly points at stub cuts where you leave a big ugly wound that never seals right, but a proper hard reduction where you cut back to a smaller branch is a whole different deal. Eighteen months is also not much time to judge, since a tree can push out a ton of fast weak growth right after a hard cut and look great for a few years before it falls apart. So are these maples actually doing well, or do they just look full from the street right now? I'd want to know what they look like in five or ten years before calling it a win.