As the growing season winds down, our arborists begin to look toward the dormant season. Contrary to popular belief, the dormant season isn’t a time when we slow down. It is a time when we take the opportunities that nature is presenting us to continue providing trusted care for your trees and shrubs.
The first step to any comprehensive tree care plan is an evaluation of your trees. The dormant season of winter gives us a few advantages when performing inspections:
- Without foliage on the trees, it’s even easier than before to see the entire structure of the tree and spot defects as well as dead limbs.
- Because diseases and pests are dormant, we can spot damage from the previous growing season and proactively construct a plan of attack for preventing further issues in the season to come.
The past two years have presented the Richmond area with some unique, record breaking challenges: an excessively wet year in 2018 and the most recent drought of 2019. Often, the damaging effects of those stress factors won’t be seen in trees until following seasons. We encourage our clients to have us regularly inspect their properties each year to track changes on their landscape and consider how best to care for trees that have experienced more severe stress than normal. This is helpful all year but is especially effective during the dormant season when we can catch our collective breath and take stock under lower pressure situations.
Let us know how we can help this winter. Our schedule for winter dormant pruning especially is filling up fast!
Thank you for your trust and business,
The Arborscapes Team