JASGP and our hard-working volunteers finished another successful cherry tree pruning last weekend.

The heavy rains last week were a little foreboding for our planned Tree Maintenance Day on Saturday. Fortunately, though, the rains stopped Friday night and by Saturday morning Fairmount Park was dry enough to go ahead as scheduled. As an added bonus, the cloudy sky prevented our volunteers from getting sunburn and kept the day from getting too hot and uncomfortable.

We spent the morning pruning the trees along Martin Luther King Drive, near where it meets Montgomery Drive. Cherry trees sprout new branches pretty haphazardly, so without regular care and trimming they can end up damaging themselves. Weak branches that break off can lead to disease that end up killing the tree. Our volunteers search for dangerous-looking branches and trim them off before they can become a hazard. Normally we also apply a blanket of mulch to protect each tree’s roots, but with a small group and looming clouds overhead, we limited ourselves this time to just trimming.

Thanks so much to our volunteers who braved the ominous rainclouds and came out for a great event. See you next time!

If you’d like to see the trees we maintained this month, click here for a map.

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