Tree & Shrub Trimming
Tree and shrub trimming across Maryland's Eastern Shore. Hedge and screen shearing, foundation shrubs, canopy raising, deadwooding, and renovation pruning on overgrown plantings. Cut at the right time of year for the species. Marshall Property Management.
When a shrub gets cut matters as much as how much comes off.
Most of the pruning damage we get called out to look at did not come from taking too much. It came from cutting at the wrong point in the year, or from cutting a plant back past the point it can grow from.
Azalea, forsythia, lilac, rhododendron, and bigleaf hydrangea all set next season’s flower buds the summer before they bloom. Cut them in fall or late winter and the plant is fine, it just will not flower. Crape myrtle, panicle hydrangea, butterfly bush, and rose of sharon bloom on wood they grow that same year, so late winter is when they should come down. The same cut on the same day helps one of those plants and costs the other a full season of bloom.
The other half is where the cut lands. Arborvitae, juniper, Leyland cypress, and spruce carry no dormant buds in their old wood. Cut into the brown interior and it stays brown for good. Yew, boxwood, holly, and most deciduous shrubs will push new growth from old wood, which is what makes real renovation possible on those and not on the evergreens people most often try it on.
Hedges & Privacy Screens
Foundation Shrubs
Canopy Raising & Clearance
Deadwooding & Structure
Ornamental Trees
Renovation Pruning
The cuts we get called in to undo.
Topping. Cutting a shade tree back to stubs to reduce its height. The tree answers with a dense flush of water sprouts attached only to the outer wood, which grow back faster than what was removed and break easily. The stubs cannot seal, so decay moves down into the trunk. There is no version of topping that ends well.
Crape murder. The same thing on crape myrtle, cut to knuckles at the same height every winter. It produces whippy growth that bends to the ground under wet blooms, and knobs that get larger every year. Thinning the stems and taking out the suckers gets flowers without any of that.
Shearing an evergreen into bare wood. An arborvitae or Leyland screen sheared back to the brown interior stays brown. On a row planted as a single species, that is usually the whole row at once, and the fix is replanting rather than pruning.
Cutting bigleaf hydrangea in spring. The blue and pink mopheads carry their buds on last year’s stems all winter. A spring cleanup cut takes the entire bloom off. These get cut right after they finish flowering or not at all.
Late summer cuts. Pruning in August and early September pushes soft new growth that has not hardened off when the first hard freeze comes. It burns back, and the plant spends stored energy on growth it does not keep.
Flush cuts and stubs. A cut made tight against the trunk removes the collar the tree seals from, and a long stub gives it nothing to seal to. Both leave an opening that stays open.
Late Winter
After Bloom
Summer
Fall
What the Shore does to plantings, and what we look for while we are in them.
Salt on the windward face. Winter spray off open water burns the exposed side of an evergreen while it is dormant. On a screen along the Bay or a wide creek, one face browns and the other stays green. Cutting the burned side back into bare wood on arborvitae or Leyland finishes it. The recovery is usually replacing the worst plants and letting the rest fill.
Bagworms. A trimming visit is the best look anyone gets at the inside of a screen. Bags on arborvitae, cedar, juniper, and Leyland read as cones until you handle one. We flag them when we find them, and treatment is timed to late May and early June when the larvae are small. See insect control.
Deer browse. Sika through Dorchester and the lower counties browse differently than whitetail, and the line they leave on a shrub is not a pruning problem. Cutting the shrub to even it up removes the growth that was going to close the gap.
Boxwood. Blight moves on tools, hands, and wet foliage. Boxwood gets cut dry, and tools get cleaned between plants where there is any question about a planting.
Storm loading. Limbs over a roof, a drive, or a service line get looked at before the season, not after. When one does come down, the crew that removes it is the same one that handles storm cleanup.
Brush. Everything cut goes through the chipper and into our own mulch rather than to a landfill. See professional mulch installation.
How it runs.
Some properties get trimmed once and that is what they needed. Most do better on a schedule, because the cuts stay small and the plants keep their shape instead of being brought back from overgrown every few years. On properties enrolled in a year-round maintenance plan, pruning is built into the calendar by species, so the spring bloomers get cut after they bloom and the summer bloomers get cut in late winter without anyone having to track it.
We walk the property, tell you what needs cutting and when it should happen, and give you a number. If something on the list is past the point where pruning fixes it, that is what we will tell you.
See also: Tree & Shrub Planting · Landscaping · Insect Control · Estate Maintenance · Storm Cleanup · Forestry