Tree Trimming & Pruning in New Orleans, LA

Tree trimming and pruning in New Orleans means working with trees that grow out as much as up. A mature live oak can throw limbs 40 feet or more sideways, low enough to rest on a roof, a car or a neighbor's fence, and those long horizontal limbs are what give the city its look. Good pruning keeps that shape while taking weight off the ends of the longest limbs, clearing roofs and the street, and removing dead wood before a storm throws it through a window.

What we prune for

• Clearance: limbs lifted or shortened away from roofs, gutters, galleries, driveways and the street.
• Deadwood: dead and broken branches removed, which is the single most useful thing before hurricane season.
• Structure: on younger trees, choosing a main leader and spacing scaffold limbs so the tree grows strong forks instead of tight, weak ones.
• Weight reduction: long, heavy limbs shortened back to a side branch so there is less leverage on the attachment in wind.
• Light thinning: selected branches removed so wind and light move through the crown.

How the cuts are made

We follow ANSI A300, the American standard for tree pruning. In practice that means cutting just outside the branch collar instead of flush with the trunk, making reduction cuts back to a branch large enough to take over, and not leaving stubs. ISA guidance generally advises against removing more than about a quarter of a mature tree's live crown in one year, because the leaves are what feed the tree. It also means no climbing spikes on trees that are being pruned rather than removed, since every spike hole is a wound.

Topping and crape myrtles

Topping, cutting a tree's main stems back to stubs, is not an accepted pruning practice under the A300 standard. It produces clusters of fast, weakly attached sprouts and invites decay. You see it every winter on crape myrtles across the metro, cut back to the same knobs year after year. A crape myrtle that has outgrown its spot can be thinned and shaped instead, and a badly knuckled one can often be retrained over a few seasons. LSU AgCenter lists crape myrtle among the more wind-resistant small trees here, so it is worth keeping in good shape.

Before you prune near the street

If the limbs you want cleared belong to a tree between the sidewalk and the curb or on a neutral ground, the tree is likely a City tree, and Parks and Parkways requires a City permit for any work on it. Limbs near Entergy's lines are trimmed by Entergy. We will tell you which branches are yours to have pruned.