I MESSAGED to my arborist neighbor the other day to just say, “Happy holidays.” And at the end of my note, I also said this: “See you soon.”
Winter may be the quiet season up North here in the garden in general, but it’s when a lot of the pruning work gets done. Arborist Basil Camu of Leaf & Limb tree-care company in Raleigh, N.C., helped me map out a tree care to-do list for the season, including winter pruning and other tasks.
Basil is co-founder of Leaf & Limb, and author of the book “From Wasteland to Wonder: Easy Ways We Can Help Heal Earth in the Sub/Urban Landscape” (affiliate link). Leaf & Limb is a very different kind of tree service that doesn’t cut down trees, but instead focuses on tree care through all phases of the plant’s life, emphasizing smart pruning, soil care, and more.
Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page to enter to win a signed copy of his book.
Read along as you listen to the Jan. 6, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
winter tree care, with basil camu
Margaret Roach: Welcome back to the program, Basil. So what zone are are we talking to you from now [laughter]? I became a 6A, I graduated to 6A. What are you?
Basil Camu: Yeah, well, we graduated to a strictly 8A, a little bit of 8B depending on sort of where you are, but we lost our 7B designation, which is pretty wild.
Margaret: Yes, wild times out there in the world, and I don’t know how the plants really are managing. Honestly, talk about resilience; wow. I’m impressed.
So let’s start with the when of tree and shrub pruning, because I know a lot of gardeners fret, in all different zones, about remembering what to prune when and what not to prune when. And I think it’s, for me, it’s always… and for my readers from the comments and questions I get, it seems like it’s always a little trickier remembering with the shrubs more than with the trees, like when you prune the lilac or which hydrangea species gets pruned when and so forth. But winter’s a major opportunity for pruning in many cases. And I wanted to hear your thinking about timing, your general thinking about timing, your advice or philosophy.
Basil: Yes, great question. I tend to offer some really easy things to remember, and then I can get into a little more nuance, but just sort of easy things to remember. Winter is generally the best time to prune. It’s a great time. So that’s an easy thing to remember. Shrubs do get complicated. It depends a lot on your goal, but I think many people are pruning for flower production. And just an easy rule of thumb, it’s not always true, but it’s often true is if you prune after the flowers go to seed, it’s often a good time to prune. But particularly with trees, winter is a really great time to prune. I’ll add a little layer of nuance: The worst time to prune many trees is actually spring because of the rising sap, and particularly with maples, river birches, things that already do a lot of sap production in spring, this can be especially harmful.
And then more nuance here, sort of contrary to popular belief, summer actually can be a great time to prune. It is going to be a little more dependent on what’s happening. For example, here in North Carolina, we had 25 days of no rain with something like 12 records for highest temperatures. I mean, that is not a great time to prune, but in a typical growing season, it can be a good time to prune. That might’ve been a little too much detail.
Margaret: No, no, not at all. Because it sounds familiar. Even though I’m far away, relatively speaking and zones away, we had a very long stretch of hot and dry, and it was kind of like all bets were off about exactly what the right care for any plant was [laughter]. It’s like, I don’t know the rule book for this new scenario, kind of.
Basil: I should also add when is going to depend very heavily on your goals. I really think when it comes to pruning, first and foremost, you have to establish a goal and then from your goal, the when and the how become more obvious.
Margaret: Right. So some of the things I usually don’t do: I wouldn’t, for instance, if I have a spring-blooming shrub like a lilac, I probably don’t want to heavily prune it in the winter before it blooms. You kind of alluded to this before, and you said wait until after the flowers are spent, they’re done, because otherwise I might lose some of my flowers. But then there are also exceptions to every rule. You’re probably not going to kill the plant by doing that. And sometimes you know what? Something’s overgrown, or it’s a mess, or it had some damage in the winter or whatever, and you’ve got to do this stuff. But setting goals, you’re absolutely right. What do I want from this plant; why am I growing it? And making an assessment. I think that’s right.
Basil: Yeah. In regards to trees, my favorite goal is strength. And that often requires doing something called structural pruning, and winter is just a good time for that. Shrubs and smaller trees, you don’t usually have to worry about strength so much. Maybe you’re worried about a shrub splitting. It’s not really typically a concern, but even if it did split, it’s probably not going to cause any harm. So usually the strength goals are reserved for the big trees. And then when I’m focusing on shrubs and smaller trees, I’m really thinking about what do I want from this plant? Is it fruit? Is it a flower? Is it just to grow and provide some screening between me and the neighbor? That sort of thing.
Margaret: Right here in my garden, I have a bunch of old apples, and a bunch of old crabapples and other fruit, some espaliered fruit—Asian pears and stuff like that, and even some of my older magnolias, things that get a lot of water sprouts and suckers and so forth. I feel like winter is an absolute must time for me to get that junk. And I mean, I say that lovingly [laughter], but that wood production, those sprouts that mostly go straight vertical, aren’t going to turn into anything worthwhile and are just potentially going to cause trouble, I think, especially as I have a snowier climate maybe than you do. I want to get those out of here. And so that’s one of the things that’s a big activity in winter here, no matter what. I don’t have to think twice about that.
Any other examples of things that you are always saying to clients, “Hey, we need to make this an annual routine,” or anything like any other examples?
Basil: Yeah, I will caveat by saying what you’ve just described is especially important for fruit production as well. We don’t typically get into a lot of fruit production. If we do have a client that’s interested in that, what you described is exactly right. But often what we’ll recommend is even on the fruiting trees, we’ll recommend even if they want fruit production, to focus on good structure simply because it might produce less fruit, but it’ll hold it more steadily with less chances of the branches splitting.
So again, kind of goes to goals. And I do have to be very clear when I say really primarily the main goals we’re serving first and foremost is structure for large trees. Secondarily, it’s going to be clearing off buildings; this is trees and shrubs. And then most of our goals around small trees and shrubs are purely aesthetic. So what you describe, if a client does want a sort of a more clean look, we do exactly that, but some of our clients might have those same trees, and it’s really just meant to be protection around the yard for privacy. So we actually would not-
Margaret: Clean ’em out as much.
Basil: Yeah, exactly. And then I should also mention we have a lot of clients who are very ecologically minded and actually want as much of that as possible, particularly the dead branches for birds and insects that would use those branches.
Margaret: Yeah. So with structural pruning and strength, you’ve mentioned a couple of times, so I’m sort of visualizing and I’m thinking about like the angles of trunks and branches, and the number of trunks, and the structure that way. Is that what we’re talking about? Some general rules like I’m trying to visualize when I stand back and look at a plant and approach it about structural pruning?
Basil: It all begins in the forest. This is where trees originated. So in a forest, you can imagine they’re competing for sunlight, which means these trees are having to grow straight and tall trunks with these even, well-spaced branches reaching for the sun. Whereas in the suburban landscape, often trees are not competing for sunlight, so they’ll grow in unnatural ways where they have these large trunks or multiple stems. [Above and below, respectively, before and after of pruning out a young double trunk of a tree.]
I think, particularly for East Coast listeners, if you go out on a walk in the woods, look for a red maple growing in the woods. It is so different than a red maple growing on the streets, which I imagine every city in the Eastern USA has maples on the streets. It’s a very different growth structure. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to promote that idea of either from a very young age, training the tree to have one trunk with small, well-spaced branches. Or if it’s an older established tree, and we’re past that point, then it’s a matter of reducing weight off of the trunk.
So you can imagine, again, that maple that I’m describing might have three different large trunks. It’s much too late to train it to have one trunk, but we can at least reduce weight off the ends of the trunks. And this is not the top; this is sort of outer edge, spreading over your car or your house. And by reducing some of that weight, we now minimize the possibility that the tree might split, which would obviously cause damage. And of course the tree could very well die from that.
Margaret: Right. At this time of year, I started the introduction of the show today with the anecdote about sending a note to my local arborist. And we walk the fence line, usually, before work begins in winter. We’ll go walk around the perimeter of the property, kind of walk around together and say, “What about that? What do you think about that? What do you think?” Is that what you do with clients?
Basil: Yeah.
Margaret: And you’re kind of like showing the client how to look. You’re looking, but you also explaining how to look. Is that what you’re doing?
Basil: Exactly. And we tend to focus on the trees that are closer to houses and cars and driveways and streets because those have higher consequence. And then if a client does have trees… By consequence, I mean if a tree were to split. And then has the budget or desire to go look at other trees that are not necessarily near a house or a street, we would look at those as well. But sometimes those are more luxury items just pending budgets.
Margaret: And I say the property line, walking the fence, because I have an 8-foot deer fence around a few acres, and so the fence is a precious commodity. It’s like the fence is one of the things—not as precious as the house, but it’s another thing that I want to keep an eye on. So if I have a vulnerable limb of something big like you’re discussing that’s hanging over the fence, we want to talk about that. We want to figure out what we’re going to do about that.
Basil: And especially if there’s young trees in play, we love to get clients involved if they’re interested, just because it’s a great way to get engaged with your trees. And pruning a young tree for good structure is by far the best place to start. And it’s also easy, it’s something a homeowner can do, and I could describe that process if you want, but if that’s too much nuance, we can just skip it.
Margaret: No, go ahead. Tell me a little bit, the brief version of that.
Basil: If a homeowner wanted to do this work themselves, it’s pretty simple. You look at your young tree and you’re first sort of visualizing where do I think the trunk, the main trunk is? And often with young trees, there might be multiple that are emerging, so just pick your one that you think should be the leader. And then your second step is simply if there are other developing trunks, cut them in half or fully remove them. You can do that on a young tree.
Once you do that, then we’re looking at vertical and horizontal spacing between branches. So we’re looking on a horizontal plane; this is the ring around the circumference. We really only want one branch per horizontal. And then we’re also looking at vertical spacing. We would like to have some separation, half a foot to a foot of vertical spacing as well.
And that if we could just get those two things right, that sets up a really beautiful scaffold on this tree as it grows. And the homeowner can often do that for potentially five to seven years if they’re willing to maybe invest maybe in a pole tool. This is like, you can imagine your Felco pruners, but they’re on the end of a 6-foot pole. So with a minor equipment purchase there, you can do this for the first five to seven years of a tree’s life, and that alone can set up the tree for excellent long-term strength, which translates into having that tree for longer.
Margaret: You just perked me right up because I’m a freak about tools, pruning tools [laughter]. An anecdote, years ago: I was doing a story and I went to an arborist trade show, like a convention as part of research for the story. And I was wandering around, there were booths, trade-show kind of booths selling things, and they had all these professional pruning tools. And they looked nothing like the things that I was seeing in the garden centers, sold to home gardeners.
Basil: Yeah.
Margaret: And I was like, whoa. And this is decades ago, but at any rate: telescoping pruners, or long-reach pruners with either a saw on one end or like you said, the working end of a pruning shears on the one end, but a long lightweight aluminum extended grip, so to speak.
And there I am: Finally, it’s not dangerous; I’m standing on the ground and I’m reaching 6 feet. I’m not on a ladder by myself in the backyard, which I’m totally like, no, no, no, no, no homeowner! No, no, no! [Laughter.] There’s a reason arborists work in teams, because of safety. You don’t do that alone. But just the idea that there are tools in the professional range that are a better investment, I think because they tend to be lightweight, yet high performance. You’re not carrying a big load of junk and over-efforting to make every cut. Like loppers, for instance, that are made of tubular aluminum or whatever they’re made. Something that it works at the cutting end; it’s tough, but it’s not 10 pounds or whatever. And so I’m not exhausted from using it.
And I have to admit, I’m an a ARS brand junkie. I like that particular brand. That’s what I first learned about. And I guess it’s an Asian, Japanese. And it’s like once you discover that, it liberates you to be able to do some of this work yourself. Again, from the ground level. Sorry, I obsessed. [Laughter.]
Basil: No, no, you’re exactly right. It’s worth investing in some good tools. And I’d say a ARS is great. Jameson is a good pole-tool company.
Margaret: Oh, I don’t know about them. Oh, great.
Basil: Yeah, for saws, Silky saws are just the best there are. Be careful with them; they’re razor sharp. And then Felcos are my go-to hand pruners.
One last note: You mentioned safety, and we would be remiss not to mention this. Two rules: Number 1, when you’re pruning, especially with tools that are sharp or long, please wear your eye protection and wear a helmet, even if it’s just a bicycle helmet. If you’re pruning from above and a branch could fall down and stab you in the forehead or something. And then you’ve said this one, but only work from the ground on flat, stable surfaces, no ladders, no nothing. That’s where people really get hurt.
Margaret: And I think in gardening in general, I mean safety glasses when we’re mowing, when we’re pruning—not just when we’re pruning, but it’s like we should have safety glasses on in a lot of situations. Our eyes are precious and we need to protect them. And I think a lot of people don’t do that. I have pairs of safety glasses all over the place here. [Laughter.]
Basil: I think it’s actually crazy. But one of the most dangerous scenarios is pruning a large shrub or small ornamental tree, because they tend to have a lot of little stems. And I cannot tell you how many times I have turned and had a stem just smash on my eyeglasses, and I’m like, wow, really glad I had those eyeglasses on.
Margaret: Yes, yes. To be in that thicket in there and turn around and move around; yes, it’s dangerous. So no, I agree.
So good winter tree care: We’ve spoken before, and you’ve told me before, it focuses not just on the pruning, but also on the overall health of the tree—boosting the overall health of the tree. We’re not talking about throwing a bunch of fertilizer on; we’re talking about something else altogether, about soil care, yes?
Basil: Right. Absolutely. If structural pruning gives a tree strength, then we give a tree health through its soil ecosystem. And really the best ways to do that are going to be leaving the leaves under the tree. You can rake them out of your yard if you want to, but pile them under the tree. Adding arborist wood chips; I’m a big fan. I really recommend them over processed mulches. And then if you have compost you’ve been making, this is a great time to sprinkle compost around your trees. And then for the really overachievers out there who are listening and have a desire to do so, another great layer is just to plant understory companion plants. These are little trees and little shrubs. The more diversity in that space, the happier all of the plants and the happier all of the insects, because they can now finish their life cycles.
Margaret: So we’re mimicking nature’s layered version of planting, like where trees are surrounded by smaller trees and shrubs and then herbaceous understory stuff and so forth. We’re mimicking that.
Basil: Exactly. Yeah. Even if you don’t have time to do all that, at least just putting some leaves under there, and some arborist wood chips would be great; these are going to make your tree really happy. Especially going back to this past summer, we saw so many large oaks die this past summer from hypoxolon canker, and there was a very strong correlation between the oaks that died and very poor soil conditions and the oaks that were O.K. and their healthy soil conditions. So it can really matter, especially in the face of these hotter, drier summers.
Margaret: So you said arborist wood chips twice, and remind me now what it is that’s in arborist wood chips. Is it that it includes twigs and branch wood, not just trunks ground up? Is it the wood that’s in it?
Basil: It’s generally a little bit more diverse. This is the stuff you get from a tree service for free. They’ll all for free. Some cities might even have access to a site called chipdrop.com. These are usually the bigger cities. That’s like a platform you can go on and request with chips for free.
But the short of it is these are just more diverse products, less processing, it’s more parts of the tree. I think probably the Number 1 reason I recommend it, aside from being free, is that it does not become waterproof. A lot of those triple- and double-shredded mulches actually become waterproof over a number of months, and then that’s actually very counterproductive to the health of your trees. So that’s probably the biggest reason I recommend arborist wood chips.
Margaret: O.K. And the free is a good thing. [Laughter.]
Basil: Free is a great thing.
Margaret: Yeah. No, it’s no bags. You know what I mean? That’s the other thing. It hasn’t been trucked across hundreds of miles. It’s local. It’s reusing it in a fairly close proximity to where it was produced, which is great.
Basil: Right? I mean, honestly, we could spend an hour talking about the merits of wood chips, but I’ll throw in one other. The reason [the processed kind are] called triple-shredded is because it goes through the grinder three times. So your carbon footprint is three times heavier than just normal arborist wood chips. That’s another reason not to get the processed stuff.
Margaret: Right. So at this time of year, what are the things that you’re doing the most of? Is it structural pruning? Tell us a little bit more about which tree, which trees or is it all trees—or are there’s any no-no’s or as I said to you some of the ones that I always do every year.
Basil: Everything’s fair game this winter, unless you have a goal around flower production. And then there are going to be some shrubs you do not want to prune right now. But we’re doing a lot of structural pruning right now. That’s the big thing.
I’ll also add that we are not doing a lot of deadwood pruning. It’s just an homage to the birds and the old trees and snags that you and I both love. But we do try to leave as much of that as we can for the birds, unless it’s a hazard, of course. But structural pruning is the heavy one. The compost and the wood chips; we do a lot of that this time of the year. And then we also do a lot of tree planting, which is out of the scope of this conversation. But of course, this is a wonderful time to plant trees as well.
Margaret: Right. Well you said snags and wildlife trees, dead and dying trees that can be left standing at least in part if not whole. And I kind of think of my garden like Margaret’s House of Snags, because it’s like these totem poles; I can’t bear to take down trees. And when a tree does have to come down, eventually, I try to have the arborist who’s helping me lay the carcass, so to speak, beside where it grew. Just lower it, but leave it and let it degrade. And boy, oh boy, the woodpeckers, they are so happy. The pileateds here, the nice big woodpeckers, they love all those trunks.
Basil: Oh yeah. Plus you’re adding these huge chunks of wood that are rotting. Those are a home for beetles. Disclaimer to the listeners: You sent me some photos of your yard after the last time we spoke. I was so impressed. There’s just so much amazing ecology happening there.
Margaret: I think people probably who come on garden tours probably think she’s a little bit messy and crazy, but I have so many, I have, I dunno, 70-something species of birds that visit every year reliably. And I can’t help but think it’s partly because of those types of practices, as well as the fact that I have some in-ground water that I offer them year-round. But I think it’s those ecological things that make the biggest difference. Not just ornamental things, but the ecologically based decisions like that.
Basil: I agree. It’s good. Soil is a foundation for a really robust food web, so there’s a lot of foundational insect activity happening on your property that’s translating into food abundance for the birds. And so I think you’re spot on.
Margaret: Well, and if we think about a tree that’s grown in a place for 50 or 60 or 70 or even more years, the biomass represented in that trunk alone. Do you know what I mean?
Basil: Oh yeah.
Margaret: It’s a massive amount of living tissue, and creatures are in there unseen creatures, billions of them probably [laughter]. It’s a lot. So I’m fascinated by it, and charmed by it.
Basil: The research is not great yet on this point that I’m about to make, but tentatively scientists think that something like 80 percent… The food you were talking about, just the biomass of the tree, that only represents potentially 20 percent of the food that tree is creating. The other 80 percent is getting distributed out via leaves, and so you can just imagine how much those mature trees are doing in terms of feeding other life.
Margaret: Yeah. I just want you to give us a really quick pitch: You have a nonprofit [Project Pando] as well, besides Leaf & Limb, the tree-care company, there is your nonprofit.
Basil: We work with the community to collect native seeds, and we grow those and give them away for free. This is a very busy time for our nonprofit because there’s so many seeds available right now. Ultimately, we would love for people to do this work in their communities wherever they’re listening. It’s really fun, it’s educational. It’s a way to meet your neighbors and get to know them. You can learn about our nonprofit; we mapped out the blueprint on how to do this and put it in our book, which you mentioned earlier. The book, I will mention, has a whole chapter just on structural pruning. So if folks want to get details about how to do it.
Margaret: I’m so glad to speak to you. And now I want to get outside and go see what’s going on with the trees and make my list of the to-dos [laughter]. So thank you Basil, and again, happy New Year. Good to talk to you.
Basil: Always an honor and a privilege. Thanks for having me, and I hope you have a wonderful New Year.
(All photos from Leaf & Limb; used with permission.)
enter to win a copy of ‘from wasteland to wonder’
I’LL SEND A SIGNED COPY of Basil Camu’s “From Wasteland to Wonder: Easy Ways We Can Help Heal Earth in the Sub/Urban Landscape” to one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
What’s your winter tree-care regimen?
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Jan. 6, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
