We wish to highlight reasons why supporting The Garden Club of the Back Bay through our 2009 Holiday Wreath Sale is so important to the Back Bay, the City of Boston, and the Greater Boston Area, so from now through the end of November, we’ll feature posts which focus on different projects funded by our loyal and generous customer base.

Today, let us consider the rather prosaic but important task of tree pruning.  It’s not glamorous – no one ever swoons over the thought of lopped off tree limbs.  Without periodic pruning, however, tree branches fall in storms,  tearing off bark and allowing pathogens to enter the trees, weakening and often ultimately killing them.  Tree limbs which are not pruned back hit pedestrians in the face, interfere with traffic, obscure traffic signals, and create misshapen and often ugly silhouettes.  Building shadows  force trees to lean toward the light, so growth is lopsided.  Pruning can give such trees a more graceful appearance.  The City of Boston naturally believes in pruning, but budgetary restrictions only allow pruning when a tree is in danger of toppling over and crushing personal property.

The Garden Club of the Back Bay came to the rescue a number of years ago, allocating a portion of our yearly budget to the task of pruning.  We hire an excellent licensed arborist, Bob Lorie,  to prune existing trees during street cleaning days when cars have been cleared from the streets. There are approximately 600 sidewalk trees in the Back Bay and most trees have been pruned at least once. We continue regular pruning of the smaller trees to get them above the height of traffic and to give them a good shape as they mature. We also offer pruning services for front yard trees at a group rate.  We hope you will consider purchasing one of our lovely wreaths.  Proceeds support our pruning efforts.  To order, and for more information, click here.