City-Owned Trees in Idlewild Neighborhood Are Being "Topped" Without Proper Permission

This type of aggressive pruning is detrimental to the trees, according to the city arborist and volunteer Tree Stewards.

By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Submitted photos of "topped" trees on Ellis Avenue and Yates Circle in Idlewild.

About a dozen trees planted in city-owned utility strips in the Idlewild neighborhood have been aggressively pruned or “topped” in a way that could be detrimental to the trees.

“Topping”—or severely cutting back “the limbs of any tree within its crown so as to remove the normal canopy of the tree”—is not done “as a general practice” on city-owned trees, according to Fredericksburg City Code.

Sonja Cantu, the City of Fredericksburg’s communications manager, said that neither the city’s public works department nor the Idlewild homeowners association were responsible for topping the trees in question.

Also according to city code, it is unlawful for “any person other than the City Manager or his designee to plant, trim, or prune any tree, shrub, or other vegetation” on city-owned property “without first obtaining the written permission of the City Manager or his designee.”

Violation of this provision is a misdemeanor and is punishable by a fine of “not more than $1,000,” in addition to any civil penalties or charges that may be levied, according to city code.

Cantu told the Advance that “Per agreements with the Village of Idlewild and the Estates of Idlewild subdivisions, their HOA is responsible for the maintenance of landscaping within these public rights-of-way, which includes the trees located within the utility strips.”

She said the city’s arborist has provided “guidance for prudent maintenance of the trees” to the HOA’s landscape contractor, and that the arborist has “identified this type of pruning is not appropriate for the health of the trees and can be detrimental.”

“This type of pruning on these tree specimens creates poor tree structure that is very difficult to correct,” Cantu said. “The trees’ health conditions will have to be observed over time before making further determinations and actions.”

Anne Little, a Fredericksburg resident and the founder of Tree Fredericksburg—which from 2008 until 2024 partnered with the city to plant and maintain the urban tree canopy—told the Advance that it “looks like some company is going door to door and asking [homeowners] if they would like their trees shortened.”

“People, I think, don’t understand that they are not allowed to do that,” Little said.

Cantu noted that “homeowners are not permitted to prune any trees located within any of the City public rights-of-way.”

Tree Fredericksburg was responsible for planting about 500 trees in Idlewild in 2013, Little said. According to the city’s interactive tree canopy map, the neighborhood’s streets are planted with a mixture of yellowwoods, Eastern redbuds, red maples, pin oaks, Chinese pistaches, laceback elms, and Japanese zelkovas.

According to an article published by the Penn State extension at the Pennsylvania State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, people often top trees out of worry that they have grown too big and unsafe. However, “tree topping harms trees, shortens their lives, and creates dangerous or hazardous trees that will surely drop branches in the future.”

“If you don't want a tree to get too big, then it is best to remove the large tree and replace it with a type of tree that doesn't grow too tall,” the article states. “You can't ‘stop’ trees from growing tall by topping. If you do succeed, you have killed them.”

Little said that the topped trees in Idlewild will need to be replaced.

“Once you top a tree, a tree is not able to recover from that,” she said.

Steve Watkins, a resident of Idlewild and one of the city’s Tree Stewards, said it “breaks my heart to see the trees harmed in these ways, knowing they're unlikely to thrive or ever grow into maturity.”

The topped trees now “won't provide much-needed shade for the neighborhood so we're less of a heat island, won't add to our collective property values in the compromised shape they're in, won't become the vital homes they were meant to be for birds and insects, won't absorb as much of the CO2 from the nearby interstate, etc,” he said.

Since 2024, the city has employed a full-time, International Society of Aboriculture-certified arborist to oversee Fredericksburg’s tree canopy, with assistance from the Tree Stewards, the Fredericksburg Clean and Green Commission, and the Friends of the Rappahannock.

Watkins said he and other Tree Stewards “spend hours with tree experts learning when and where and how to properly” prune canopy trees.

He said he hopes the city will “insist that tree contractors for the city and the city schools have either the city arborist or Tree Stewards present to advise” on pruning, planting, and caring for the city’s trees.

The city should “educate the public; issue warnings, and then fines if necessary; [and] immediately replace topped trees so people don’t think it’s OK” to top them, Watkins said.

Cantu said the city’s public works department “is engaged with Idlewild HOA representatives to put in place appropriate measures to prevent future occurrences” of tree topping.

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