My neighbor said letting a big maple lean is fine because 'trees know what they're doing'

He's a retired engineer, not an arborist, but his comment about natural tree strength made me pause. Do you think we sometimes over-prune or cable when a tree's own structure is actually sound enough?

4 comments

4 Comments

maryr432mo ago

Had a sugar maple leaning toward our deck for years. Got a second opinion from an arborist who said the root system was solid and the lean was just how it grew. @blake_kelly19 has a point about trusting the tree more than the fix. We just trimmed a few dead branches and it's been fine through some nasty storms.

joseph_green132mo agoTop Commenter

My buddy in Vermont had a huge oak leaning over his garage for years. He got talked into a full cabling job that cost him almost two grand. Then that big ice storm last winter hit and a perfectly straight pine he never worried about crushed his shed instead. Sometimes we mess with the wrong trees trying to fix a problem that isn't really there.

blake_kelly192mo ago

Trust the tree more than the guy selling the cable.

black.oliver7d ago

That two grand cabling job sounds like a whole lot of overkill for a lean that never moved.