The Importance of Root Pruning
In sciences, like horticulture, successful repetition of an experiment is essential to establishing its credibility. AZT’s Root Management Program is the application of practices used in other aspects of landscape horticulture modified for the commercial production of desert adapted landscape trees. Our program was inspired by the extensive research conducted by Ed Gilman, Ph.D. at the University of Florida. Prof. Gilman’s work, throughout, emphasizes the critical importance of root health and distribution to the long term vitality and durability of landscape trees. His studies focus on root development during tree production in the nursery and transplantation and maintenance practices for promoting dispersed roots for trees planted in the landscape.
Since 1999, when AZT first began evaluating and integrating root management methods into our tree production scheme, there has been an ever increasing attention given to the importance of such practices. The most recent evidence of this has been the publications by Urban Tree Foundation (UTF). These diagrams provide instructions on how root pruning should be done. Paralleling the methods used in the AZT Root Management Program, UTF encourages the removal of a maximum of 2” of the outer edge of the rootball. This practice serves to remove any potentially circling roots and acts to stimulate the rapid development of new roots from the cut edges of more mature roots. The net result of these methods being a more rapidly growing, better distributed root systems. These methods are equally applicable, and equally important, in both bumping nursery production stock and transplanting trees into the landscape.
Certainly there are quicker ways to bump and transplants trees but the cost analysis is reflected in the often used caution, “you can pay me now or pay me later.” In recent years a focal point of our discussions about the built environment has been sustainability. Nothing is more easily managed or more critical to the durability of trees in the landscape than healthy, well distributed root systems. Production and planting practices, like those illustrated by UTF, that promote tree rooting will always pay long term dividends; environmentally and aesthetically.
UTF Info Sheet 1 Root Correction Container
UTF Info Sheet 2 Correction Root Ball Shaving
Available in PDF and DWG
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