Welcome to Burnsville, NC

Tree Topping Myths

Myth: Topped trees will add value to your property. Truth: Topped trees lack natural beauty and may reduce your property values. Also, a topped tree can become hazardous and cause property damage, making it a liability.

Don't Top Trees

Topping is perhaps the most harmful tree pruning practice known. Yet despite more than 25 years of literature and seminars explaining its harmful effects, topping remains a common practice.

Don' Top Your Tree

Myth and lack of public understanding about proper tree care are two major reasons why Missourians pay to have their trees destroyed by topping them.

Tree Topping Snake Oil

People don't buy snake oil anymore, and it's no longer popular to bleed patients with leeches, so why do Missourians continue to pay good money to butcher their trees?

Tennessee Dept of Agriculture on Tree Topping

Topping can create a hazard. Storms do more damage because the new growth is weakly attached.

Five Reasons to Stop Topping

Topping has become the urban forest's major threat, dramatically shortening the lifespan of trees and creating hazardous trees in high-traffic areas.
DON'T TURN YOUR VALUABLE COMMUNITY ASSETS INTO LEGAL, AESTHETIC AND ECONOMIC LIABILITIES!

Tree Topping, or, How to Create a Disaster

Not only does topping create weak new growth, it also severely weakens the remnant tree. The tree has to take "money out of the bank" (starch out of storage) to re- grow at a time when much of its stored starches have been lost by topping. Trees normally spend their energy reserves on things like making defensive chemicals to protect themselves from diseases and pests. When they are too energy deficient to do this, the result is a tree which is more vulnerable to decay, disease, and insects.

The National Arbor Day Foundation Says Don't Top Trees

Never cut main branches back to stubs. Many people mistakenly �top� trees because they grow into utility wires, interfere with views or sunlight, or simply grow so large that they worry the landowner. Unfortunately, the topping process is often self-defeating. Ugly, bushy, weakly attached limbs usually grow back higher than the original branches.

Cracking the Myths About Tree Topping

Incorrect Myth - Topping invigorates a tree.
The Gospel Truth - Topping immediately decreases the tree's health and starts it on a downward spiral.

This Tree Service Company Agrees - Topping Ruins Trees

We do not top trees. Tree topping is tree abuse. For at least the last 30 years it has been known that tree topping causes major damage to trees that cannot be repaired. If a company advertises tree topping it is a good indicator that the people at that company know little to nothing about tree care. It is amazing to us that some companies still advertise tree topping. When a tree is topped there is no branch collar left and decay can rapidly spread into the trunk of the tree. The branches that grow from topping cuts are weakly attached to the tree and will break easily. Most species of trees will never recover from being topped and will be a hazard for the rest of their life. There are pruning techniques that can prolong the life of some topped trees but each tree needs to be evaluated individually.

Grounds Maintenance Magazine Calls Tree Topping a Plague

Tree topping is a plague on the landscape that damages trees, tree owners and landscape professionals (both literally and figuratively). For decades, many have fought to educate the uninformed, to protect tree resources and to chastise the guilty. And yet our landscapes abound with permanently, seriously injured trees standing as tall banners to "management-by-myth" ways.

Pruning Trees, Flushcuts, and Wound Dressing

For information on correct branch removal, see the leaflet on tree pruning.

Funktional Designs

Wearable art that is kind to the earth.