When planting a tree in order to get shade, most of us expect that it will grow into a big majestic specimen, one that casts its pleasant shadow throughout the yard and perhaps even holds a swing for the kids. Nobody imagines a chopped and mangled thing. No-one starts planning to reduce the head off the tree they are so tenderly setting into the ground.

When deciding where to plant a tree, however, many of us forget to consider two big realities:

• We (for now, anyway) stay in a time when overhead wires line one facet of most streets.
•  Every city and town owns some amount of land beyond the aspect of a street’s pavement – referred to as the “Right of Way” – and the city can do ANYthing it chooses in this strip of land, including erecting overhead wires the place none existed before.

Too often, trees get planted in a vicinity that will sooner or later kill them.
Now, granted, from time to time it is the town itself that plants these trees, with no notion of future overhead wires. And the severe pruning may additionally be the unavoidable end result of a city desiring to supply services in new places.

Sometimes it is a depend of everyday people just trying to fix up the the front yard, inserting the tree out close to the facet the place it’ll seem nice and space efficient, and no longer crowd the house. These sad conditions are not unavoidable. They can be anticipated. And as usual, phase of the answer lies in wondering past simply how something will look.

Is it truly proper to get rid of a tree’s central trunk – referred to as the “leader” – Will kill it?? The answer is most of the time! Not suddenly, but eventually.

Here’s why. The chief is the upright stem of the tree. When it receives chopped off, the resulting wound is a floor that faces straight up towards the sky, a high-quality flat area to trap the falling rain.
To make things worse, it is not cut at a branch “collar,” the place bushes have specialized tissue that helps develop a wonderful sort of bark over a wound. The leader would not have such a collar. So the cut doesn’t heal well. And then:

• Rainwater seeps into the exposed stub.
• The wood slowly rots.
• Insects find this nice soft wood, and make it their home.
• Fungi arrive, and spread their tiny roots.
• The rot goes deeper and deeper.
• The tree hollows out.
• The tree eventually splits.
• The end.

What to do instead

To prevent this harm and disappointment, we need only keep in mind a couple of basic things when planting a tree:

• Know how big this particular type of tree will become (this is easy to learn with a quick internet search).
• Look UP above where the tree is to be planted… and make sure there are no power lines already up there within reach of the future branches of an eventually much bigger tree.
• Know exactly where a boundary line is (i.e. the edge of the Right of Way), and be aware that any town might, at any time, without needing permission, widen the road, or install new utility lines, or decapitate/mangle any trees growing in the way of “infrastructure improvements.”
• As a good rule of thumb: never plant a large tree within 10-20’ of the edge of the road, unless power lines have already been erected…on the other side of the street!

Majestic shade trees are so wonderful and important, in so many ways. There’s really no excuse for planting a large tree in a place where it will eventually die a slow death from decapitation.