I very rarely raise my voice (except in song), but yesterday was an exception.
Several weeks ago a guy knocked on my door and asked whether I wanted my grass cut for 20 bucks. It was getting kinda long, so I said ok. He did a decent job, so I gave him another $20 to do some general trimming and clean-up. I especially pointed out the shrubs and general foliage that was becoming overgrown.
In front of my house is a little Japanese maple tree that I planted 10 years ago, after my mother passed. I joyously watched it grow over the years, especially when it turned vibrant red in the fall, thinking of how much my mother would have loved it.
After that guy left, I noticed that he had pruned the tree … except he obviously didn’t know the first thing about tree pruning. He actually wound up removing all the branches from one entire side of the tree. What I have now looks like half a tree. There’s no way to fix it; the tree has to be removed.
Yesterday the guy came back, asking whether I wanted more work done. I showed him what he had done to my little tree. First he denied that he had done it. Then he said I told him to do it. Then he said there’s nothing wrong with it. Then he said if I water the tree, the branches will grow back.
That’s when I lost it … to the extent that the neighbors came out to see what all the yelling was about. The guy could not understand what the problem was, even when I showed him that half the tree is missing.
In all fairness, you hired a guy who manifestly had insufficient expertise to do a job, did not give him specific enough instructions, and failed to monitor his work. which would have been at least prudent under the circumstances…
Heh - reminds me of the time a drunk plowed into the front end of my Isuzu Trooper coming up the wrong side of the street at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. He gets out and says “I think I am in trouble” and falls down on my lawn and starts puking. Some friend of his (not in the car) comes up and says that he saw someone else driving and they ran off. (Both my neighbor (whose car was also hit) and I saw the accident so we know that this was a load of horse doo doo.) Then the drunk’s mother (they lived just down the block) comes up and and starts berating Mrs. Thorfinnsson and I since “you white people only care about your property”. The police then show up and the drunk immediately rolls over on his stomach and puts his hands behind his back so he can be cuffed. So this obviously was not his first time at the rodeo.
To tie into the OP, the drunk (drunk again - but maybe he never sobered up) has the brass you know whats to show up on our doorstep several months later offering to shovel our sidewalk for renumeration. I (rather politely I think considering the circumstances) declined.
I figured, this being the Dope, that someone would come along to tell you it was all your fault, panache45. I didn’t actually expect it to be the very first response. Just so you know, it was not your fault. I’m so sorry about your tree.
Bad pruning can often be fixed. Hire an arborist to evaluate the situation.
We lost a huge part of a prized specimen due to disease. I assumed I’d have to take it down. An arborist, in three stages, got things right again by pruning and medicating. Five years later it looks better than ever.
What Kayaker said. It might look like an umbrella for a year or two, but you’d be amazed what can be done by the right “tree surgeon.”
I once had a bed of amazing strawberry plants. I’d bought them from one of those dutch bulb catalogs. Strawberries the size of peaches and sweet, flavorful, amazing! Id’ put an insane amount of effort into protecting them from wildlife - it was a summer-long war with the ingenuity of every squirrel and rabbit and crow in a ten-mile radius.
Then my landlady hired some idiot to come over and weed her garden. He pulled up every one of my strawberry plants. I was choking mad. . . spittting mad. . . livid. But there wasn’t a darn thing to be done, by the time I got back they were a heap of dry brown waste.
I’m sorry about your tree. I hope something can be done for it.
4th vote. I manage gardens in Santa
Barbara, and we have pruning issues like this arise a fair amount, wind damage or out of control growing.
With a vigorous growing perennial tree, like a tropical pittosporum, cutting more off the remaining side would encourage growth on the other side, and opening up the canopy would let light down into the bare side, encouraging it to sprout.
With an annual, such as your maple, this is only down very slowly and carefully in growing season, especially in full leaf, as the trunk can be burned. The tree should be trimmed after its dropped all its leaves, and is dormant. In spring, when it sprouts, you can carefully pinch back the heavier growing side, to encourage the damaged side to pop.
If its still green and growing, and hasnt started going dormant, you might give some TLC, extra water and ferts. Otherwise, I would let it rest.
A couple of year back, the builders my (former, thank goodness) landlord sent round to repair and repaint a fence decided that, as it was too wet to paint, they’d kill time by digging over the garden.
You know, the bit full of plants. Plants in full flower, in some cases.
Even after me coming and out and telling at him, the foreman still insisted he was doing me a favour, and I should shut up and be grateful, because they looked like weeds to him.
This was about 4 years back, and I still get angry thinking about it.
Yeah but you might notice that the OP didn’t ask the guy to trim the tree. He asked for general clean-up. Not rocket science. Maybe he should have supervised but it wasn’t the guy’s first job for him. Anyhow, maybe we could take a day off from criticizing every single thing everyone else does and just, you know, sympathize?
You should use this as a lesson , never hire a total stranger off the street to do any work for you. The guy now know you keep money on hand and he could be a junkie . You were lucky the guy didn’t try to force his way in your house . This kind of stuff is happening more often today. You could call a tree expert and have them tell how you can save your tree.
I can certainly sympathize about your tree. Once upon a time, my son brought home a tiny, baby green ash tree from school, for Arbor day. We planted it and it grew into a beautiful tree. Then one day, while we were all at work, a tree trimming crew from the electric company heartlessly lopped off the entire top of the tree, leaving the trunk and the lowest set of branches. I cried, but the damage was done. The tree had to be removed completely.
around here, nothing ever seems to lose its leaves.
I would have been yelling too. Or crying.