Before and after on a maple, pruning to enhance health & natural beauty.
This maple had been pruned by someone else last year, much to my client's displeasure. That person had topped- basically cut across the top of the tree in a straight line without regard to the plant's health, structure, or future growth, along with making a fair few stub cuts on lower branches.
This led to lots of regrowth, five or more twigs sprouting from each branch, growing overcrowded, weakly, and lanky. That's the cause of the long, whippy growth in the before photo on the left, which can't support it's own weight. Weeping is NOT the typical form for this tree variety, and tells us something is wrong.
This is the second time I've worked on this tree, going in stages to make it easier on the tree. Mostly, I focused on repairing the damage done by the previous pruner.
Summer is a good time to prune if you don't want to encourage rapid regrowth & do want to maintain the size of your plant or reduce it somewhat.
