Madrone tree in decline

I was asked to look at a Madrone Tree that is obviously in decline and to give the client some recommendations on what they can do for this tree. My name is Blair Glenn. I am an ISA certified Arborist. My first observation is that well, other than it being an absolutely gorgeous tree is that the foliage on the tree is not anywhere is nearest full as it should be. I would say it is probably only got about a third of the foliage that a tree of this size should have. The branch structure of the tree looks very good and as a matter of fact, it is a magnificent specimen. When I started looking at the base of the tree and the location of the house and the root zone, I started to recognize some of the problems. First off, there are considerable areas of decay and declining wood at the base of the tree. All be it, it is been this way for a long time. These problems too have a tendency to catch up with the tree. These are areas that there is no longer transport of fluids because they are blocked off by areas of decay. I walked all the way around the base and on each side of the tree there are areas that are very dry. Another significant observation is that the house has taken up part of where this tree is root system used to be. You have to remember that the tree is very old. It is much older than that house. The house was probably built sometime in the 70’s and this tree is probably close to 100 years old. When you put a house or do some construction on the root system of a tree, the long term ramifications and impact can show itself much further down then line. I believe that the construction that was done around this tree is finally catching up to it. So, what do you do? Well, there is no pruning that is going to have any positive benefit to prolonging the life of the tree. You can certainly take out the dead branches but, all that is going to do is show you how much further its declining. What you need to do here is to improve the environment for this tree so that it can hopefully start taking care of itself. Improving the environment for any tree that is in distress often times means adding additional water when it is very dry, hopefully we will have enough water this year but we are in the drought situation and when that happens, many trees react to the drought by shedding many of their leaves. On the positive side, this tree still has a fairly large area of life on it. It does not show big limbs that are entirely dead. There is still little bits of life throughout the tree. It is also important to preserve the water that does going to the soil. The rocks that around the base of the tree are good for decorative purposes, but they are really do not act as a beneficial mulch for the tree. If you could add say fur bar or commercial mulch or even wood chips under this tree, it would benefit it greatly. So what you need to do is take away the rocks and add 4 to 6 inches of mulch under this tree. Continue to water it, if you can find the water. I know, that is a difficult problem in Los Cumbres. But, I would water it every couple of weeks throughout the duration of the drought until the rainy season comes back. Hopefully, it will hang in there. Once again, my name is Blair Glenn. I am an ISA certified Arborist and owner of Saratoga Tree Service. Thank you.