Crown Reduction

Reduce the weight of potentially dangerous limbs.
Balance a misshapen tree, for example, following storm damage, or after bad pruning.
Prevent trees obstructing or damaging buildings and property.
Prevent trees from interfering with overhead telephone and power lines.


your tree before	your tree after crown reduction

People often want a tree to be smaller because it has grown too big!

Too big in the sense that the tree has become dangerous and could blow over and fall on a nearby house.

Acorn 2 Oak will perform a risk assessment determining if the tree is safe or not. You may still insist that the tree be reduced in size. The most professional response we can make is that this is an unnecessary task not endorsed by Acorn 2 Oak Ltd.

Extensive and Severe Pruning

Reducing canopy size stresses the tree because of the cuts required. Unlike a thinning cut, a drop-crotching cut does not cut back to a natural boundary, this means that decay can spread quickly inside cut branches, for this reason it is best not to perform crown reduction if at all possible.

In many instances, canopies cannot be properly reduced in size to the extent desired and certain species such as Beech do not lend themselves to crown reduction, without special techniques such as pollarding.

Over pruning of the trees to create the desired effect, with heading and drop crotch cuts, can initiate decay in the trunk or branches and stimulate rapid epicormic growth that fills in the canopy as it quickly grows to it’s original size.

It is very difficult to use crown reduction to permanently maintain a tree at a smaller size without causing the tree to decline. Consider pollarding to reduce and maintain the height if the tree is young.

Tee removal and replacement with a smaller maturing plant may be the choice that minimizes the input of resources. When a customer wishes to reduce the height, crown reducing is much preferred to topping.

Crown reduction should not be used to reduce the chances of the tree blowing over in a storm. Crown thinning is the preferred method to minimize storm damage of an otherwise structurally sound tree.

Crown reduction can be considered when the root system of a large maturing tree has substantial decay making it potentially hazardous or on a tree with a high rating.

We would suggest considering pollarding or planting a smaller maturing tree for the site.

How is crown reduction achieved?

The objective is to make cuts so that the foliage is left intact on the outer edge of the new, smaller canopy ideally, pruning cuts should not be evident when you stand back from the tree after pruning.

Topping, shearing, tipping, and rounding over are not appropriate techniques for reducing the size of the tree because they compromise the tree’s structure and can cause decay.

We would recommend when removing more than 30% of the foliage, that you consider dividing the job into 2 sessions, around 12 months apart to minimize sprouting and starch removal from the tree. To reduce the size of a tree with drop-crotch cuts, we shorten the branches that extend beyond surrounding branches. This maintains the approximate original shape of the tree. The tree is simply made smaller.

The longest portion of the main branches will be cut back to an existing, smaller lateral branch that is large enough to assume the role of the branch. This is normally a third to half the diameter of the removed branch.

Excessive sprouting accompanied by die back or decay often occurs if you cut back to a branch that is too small. It is unreasonable to expect more than about a 15-20% reduction in size of canopy from a properly executed crown reduction.

This is a time consuming technique and is more an art than a science. It requires substantial talent to perform this operation. Of course this is a temporary measure because the tree will quickly revert to its natural size.

Contact Acorn 2 Oak now!