Why Your Landscapers May Be Killing Your Trees

Landscape design notes from the cutting edge of Orcas Island

Out here in the maritime Northwest, where moss grows on the north side of everything and trees carry the hush of old rain, you learn to watch the land closely. You learn that life and death are quiet things. They don’t come with warning signs or flashing lights. Sometimes they come with a pair of dirty pruning shears.

Likely apple anthracnose. Since there are no other trees around, we suspect dirty pruning shears. Older trees will live with the diseases, young ones may not recover from being girdled.

I’ve seen it too many times now—trees failing for no good reason. Pears rotting from the inside, cherries with cankers blooming like bruises, apples that flower one last time before turning skeletal. And when you trace the rot backward, it leads not to lightning or beetle, but to the hands that were meant to tend them.

Many landscapers and orchardists—good people, skilled hands—move from site to site without ever once cleaning their tools. They’ll prune a diseased limb in one yard, then move on to the next and make the same cut. What they don’t see is that each snip becomes a point of entry. A wound. A weakness. Disease passes invisibly on steel. And by the time you notice, the damage is done.

But it’s not just the tools. It’s the whole approach to landscape design.

Some crews mow, blow, and trim with industrial efficiency, turning living landscapes into sterile displays. They rake away the leaf litter that feeds the soil. They over-prune to keep trees “clean” and shapely, never considering how that stress hollows them out. They use gas blowers that compact the earth until nothing breathes beneath. What starts as maintenance becomes quiet undoing.

If you live out here—on the islands, or anywhere this land still carries memory—you need to ask them the hard questions.

Do they sterilize their blades between jobs?

Do they understand the timing of cuts, the meaning of leaf fall, the language of fungal bloom?

Do they see your trees as living systems, or just biomass to shape and control?

The difference matters. It might mean ten more years of apples. Or none.

There are good stewards out there. Ones who sharpen their blades in vinegar, who walk the land before they work it, who listen before they act. They aren’t always the cheapest. They don’t always finish on time. But they leave the trees better than they found them. And that’s what matters.

Because this land is old, and it remembers. The wounds we make don’t just heal. They echo. We are here to help and answer questions. Give us a should out for advise or sustainable landscape design.