Gardening glossary
Pollarding
Pollarding is coppicing raised off the ground. Instead of cutting the tree at ground level, the gardener or arborist removes all the upper branches at a fixed height — typically 2–4 metres above ground — leaving a permanent "head" or "knuckle" from which new shoots emerge after each cut. Done on a regular rotation, pollarding keeps a tree compact, produces a renewable harvest of poles or branches, and prolongs the tree's overall lifespan.
The historic reason for pollarding instead of coppicing was livestock: cutting above the reach of deer, sheep, or cattle kept the regrowth out of grazing range. In modern urban and suburban gardens, the reason is usually space — pollarding keeps a large tree species (lime, plane, willow, hornbeam, mulberry) at manageable size in a small garden.
How to pollard:
1. **Choose a species that responds.** Best candidates: lime (Tilia), London plane, willow, hornbeam, mulberry, robinia, ash, and many fruit trees including mulberry and crab apple. Avoid pollarding cherries, walnuts, or birches — they bleed heavily and respond poorly. 2. **Establish the tree first.** A new tree is typically grown for 5–10 years until the trunk is 5–10 cm thick at the chosen pollard height. 3. **Make the first cut.** Late winter (December–early March), in dry weather. Cut all branches back to within 5–10 cm of the trunk, keeping the cuts close to a previous knuckle. The "head" forms as the tree calluses over the cuts. 4. **Subsequent cuts** are made on a 2–10 year rotation, depending on species and how thick the regrowth has become. 5. **Always cut back to the same head.** Cutting below the established head — into older wood — can kill the tree, while cutting too high above produces weak, badly-attached shoots.
Pollarding mistakes to avoid:
- **"Topping" a mature tree that has never been pollarded** is not pollarding — it is mutilation. Mature unpollarded trees often cannot regenerate from the bare stubs left after topping. See [topping](/glossary/topping) for why this matters. - **Letting the cycle slip too long.** Branches that exceed 10 cm thick produce poorly-attached shoots and the tree becomes hazardous. - **Wrong species choice.** Birches, cherries, conifers, and most magnolias should not be pollarded.
Famously, the avenues of London planes in Mayfair, Paris's pollarded plane trees, and the ancient pollarded oaks of Burnham Beeches (some over 800 years old) all demonstrate the technique's longevity. Pollarded trees often live longer than their unpollarded counterparts because the regular pruning prevents the long, heavy branch crowns that eventually fail in storms.