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Hi, my name is Blair Glenn, I am an ISA certified Arborist.
I was asked today to look at role of Italian Cypress at a residence in Sunnyvale. The home owner asked me to reduce the height of these all this trees down to the hedge height presumably 16 feet or so, and cut back all the branches that are hanging out from the wind and shave it back and in essence, make it an Italian Cypress hedge.
I advised her against this and I would like to explain why. Italian Cypress and all the Cypress trees as a matter of fact including some of moderate pines, the dietary cedars and some of the other conifers in our area are suffering from a disease called pitch canker.
Pitch Cankers seems to be transmitted by insects and the trees that are most susceptible to this disease are the ones that harshly pruned.
So, if I am going to come up here and get this trees and half to create a hedge row out of this, I had to warn my client that there is a possibility that one of these trees that now has an excessive amount of pitch exudating from these large cuts is going to attract insects that will very possibly transmit this pitch canker disease and what happens if you lose one or two of these, a hole in this hedge is not acceptable. You would not be able to replace it. You would not even have the opportunity for the side plants to fill in because all the foliage in these crowded situations usually dies back.
So, my recommendation to these people was to allow these trees to continue to grow tall, cut back the ones that are falling out of shape, the ones that are looking very unsightly, do a light sheering on the one side and clean it up on the bottom so that they gives it a better appearance but allow these trees to be much more natural.
Sometimes in our efforts to do what we believe is the right thing, we create a larger problem. In this case, the privacy between the two properties is very important. Both of the neighbors really enjoy this privacy.
If we made the mistake of over pruning these trees, we are cutting in back in such a harsh manner as to invite a very real problem, then the work that we do on this would be for not.
The very first tree was removed for some reason apparently was breaking the retaining wall and I advised the client not to take this stamp out. We can certainly cut it down closer to the ground. But in the efforts of grinding out the stamp, there are a lot of roots that are intermingled and that would create a weakness of the end plant. So, even removing a tree has to be thought out in terms of how it is going to affect the entirety of the row.
There is also a disparity in the way that this tree is has been maintained throughout his life. This is the neighbor side and they do not trim it back. They do not cut it back with hedge trimmers. They do not keep it sheered back like the other side has been. So it has a much more natural look.
If this is acceptable so be it, then it becomes the lower maintenance hedgerow to deal with.
If you over prune this side, it is very likely that you are going to exposed a lot of die back. And pay attention to the very first tree where the corner tree was removed, there was a large area of die back that may very well be permanent. You are not going to just suddenly have new branches erupting from this area. It may feel in some from overlapping branches. But anytime a single has to be taken out of a group, there is a going to be a consequence resulting in bare spots and die back.
So once again my name is Blaire Glenn, I am ISA certified Arborist and this are my thoughts about Italian Cypress.
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