Root Collar Excavation

Some trees or shrubs have been planted too deeply or have had soil or mulch mounded up against their trunks. This can lead to disease issues as well as complications from girdling roots. Girdling roots are roots that cross over or around the trunk or main buttressing roots on the tree or shrub. This can choke off the supply of water and nutrients going up the stem of the tree and lead to partial or total failure of the plant. By excavating the soil or mulch at the base of the tree we can expose the root flare and remove any girdling roots and ensure the plant has a good path towards success. Some trees have webbing straps used to move them in to place from the tree nursery to your home. Sometimes those webbing straps are incorrectly left on the rootball and over time will act like a girdling root and kill a tree. If you are unsure if you have any of these issues you can contact us for a consultation to professionally examine your trees.

A plum tree is having the root flare exposed and checked for any girdling roots.
Here you can see the indentation a girdling root made in to the trunk of this red maple tree as well as more girdling roots below it that need to be removed. The discoloration on the trunk of the tree is clearly visible where the mulch level was before the trunk was excavated.
All of these roots at the surface had to be removed because they either were actively girdling the trunk of the red maple or were attached to the girdling roots that were. The main buttressing roots of this tree are about 6 inches below these roots.
Another mass of girdling roots and in this case some landscape fabric as well. When this tree was installed it was maybe 3 inches in diameter. Now that it is 18 inches in diameter the landscaping fabric that was far enough away from the trunk is biting in to the trunk of the tree and girdling it.
Here is what the red maple looked like before any work was done on root collar excavation. In a typical tree you would see the buttressing roots flaring out at the base. A lot of trees in our landscapes look like telephone poles coming out of the ground with no root flare visible. This is hugely problematic and indicative of it either being planted too deep, overmulched, or it has had soil piled up around it. If you see this in your landscape please reach out to us to inspect and recommend preservation methods.