Tree Trimming Two Cedar Elms in Fort Worth, TX

Cedar Elm (Ulmus crassifolia)

over driveway and low canopy

This cedar elm was growing like a bush! It needed to have the canopy raised, deadwood removed, and over extended branches cut back. It is important to keep the lowest larger branches for stability, but any branch that is hitting you in the head while mowing now, will continue hitting you in the head. It's best to remove these before they get big to allow the tree to seal the wound while it is smaller in diameter.

Cedar Elm # 2

This cedar elm was just as bushy and low, but much thicker in the canopy. Most of the time there is a lot of thickness in the canopy it doesn't mean you need to start cutting random branches and ripping the interior growth out of the tree, usually just means there is dead, crossing, rubbing branches, or thick vertical branches in the canopy. It's important to keep interior growth in the tree to prevent lions-tailing and exposing parts of the tree to unnecessary sun and wind.

After Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) was trimmed

The over extended branches that were reaching to be over the driveway were reduced and cut back to laterals that encourages higher growth. The canopy was raised on this cedar elm without compromising large limbs, but many smaller ones pointing downward. This allowed people to walk under it without overhead hazard. 

Project overview

While maybe more difficult to tell by picture, we got many good reductions out of these trees. Plenty space to walk under them, growth is encouraged in the direction we want, naturally they are as thin as they need to be without doing any structural pruning, and we regained canopy separation. Overall I am very happy with how these guys are doing