Tree Service was here

It is hard to believe, but we have sixteen tall Queen Palms, two giant Washingtonias (another variety of palms) and four clumps of big strelitzia nicolai 'Giant Bird of Paradise' and eight phoenix roebelenii 'Pygmy Date Palms' in our small suburban garden. I love these evergreen tropical plants and really like them as a green background to my predominantly rose garden - Think what the yews are for the English folks my tropical plants are for me here in Southern California. The palms and strelitzias are growing fast though and therefore have to be cleaned up from time to time. Ours were more than due! Considering the number of plants that need to be taken care of it is a painfully expensive job, but we had to bite the bullet, it simply had to be done.

Ideally you should clean up Queen Palms and Washingtonias and the like once a year to have them always looking at their best, but because of the costs, we only have done it every second year up to now. Since the first clean-up, to reduce costs, I take care of all 'Pygmy Date Palms' myself (or sometimes I ask the gardener to cut back yellow fronds), which is possible since these palms are not getting that tall, you just have to stay on top of them to keep them looking nice. I also cut back all yellow leaves of the strelizia nicolais as far high up as I can reach, but the Queen Palms and especially the Washingtonias are so tall that someone has to climb up their trunks to remove the old palm fronds. For that job you certainly need a professional to come in and do it for you. And so last month I called a tree service.

This is how the front yard looked before the tree service crew came in. It is pretty obvious that the tall 'Queen Palms' are in need of a good hair cut. With a little bit of a heavy heart I decided to get rid of the 'Pygmy Date Palms' in the foreground on the left side of this photo.

Here is a picture that shows these 'Pygmy Date Palms' from the side. The one to the left is growing more and more into the sidewalk. These palms have very long thorns attached to their fronds and I was always concerned that they would poke a child, a dog or even worse a baby in a stroller. The one to the right is growing directly into our decorative wall. This variety of palms becomes approximately 10 - 15 ' tall, so things will only get more problematic, and even though I liked the nice green that they provided to the front yard, they had to go.

At times the yard looked like a war zone! You wonder how the garden will survive it! But it came through it surprisingly well, even the roses only showed very little damage from fallen palm fronds. Of course, it helped that they barely had started to leave out.

Can you believe that all the green material stored on top of the truck came from my garden only? 

The front yard after they were done. It looks a little bare, but the palms will grow back quickly and fill in again.

Unfortunately I didn't take "before" photos of the backyard. Here is a guy dangling very high with a saw in the 'Queen Palms'. I was getting already dizzy, when I just looked at him.

This used to be a group of four 'Queen Palms', but they were planted too close together. The fronds of the three big palms were always in each others way and never looked really nice or as elegant as 'Queen Palms' are supposed to look. So after much inner debate I decided to take one out. You can see the rest of the trunk in the middle between the small Queen Palm in the center of the group and the tall one to the very left.

The fronds of the palms and the strelitzias look big when they are on the plants, but how big they really are you only realize when they have been cut down and fallen to the ground. Carried out of the yard by this crew member you get a better idea if you compare the size of the fronds to the size of his body.

This was the most scary part for me. These Washingtonia Palms are so tall already and it looks quite dangerous watching the guy working on them that high up there.

Here he is almost done with the first Washingtonia Palm. I was glad when the pruning of the palms was over and he was back on the ground safely.

This photo was taken after the crew left. I think they did a great job.

The strelitzia nicolais look very good, too. Some of their biggest trunks were removed and now they let more light through.

I have hired Troy Muncrief, ASAP Tree Service, to do this job for me. I was working with him and his crew for the second time and have to say I was pretty happy with them. They were on time, reliable, professional, thorough, friendly, and cleaned-up well after they finished. Besides all that what I truly appreciate is that Troy really listens to what you want to get done, so there were no unwanted surprises afterwards. If you are looking for a good tree service in the San Diego area I would highly recommend him. Here is his contact information: (858) 487 1244 or (760) 480 1670.

Happy spring to everyone!

See you in the garden!

Christina