#backyard trees

My neighbor asked me to help deal with the ivy on her silver maple while her husband was recovering from knee surgery and couldn't do yard work for a while. I said yes before I really understood what I was signing up for. Three seasons of unchecked English ivy on a mature tree is a bigger job than it looks like from the driveway, and I made basically every mistake you can make on the first attempt before figuring out the right way to do it.

Attempt One: Just Pull It

My first instinct, like most people's, was to just start pulling. Grab a handful of vine near the base and yank downward. It came off in a satisfying strip for about two feet, and then I looked at what came with it: a strip of bark, maybe an inch wide, peeled right off the trunk along with the vine. That was the moment I stopped and actually looked up what I was supposed to be doing instead of winging it. The Morton Arboretum's plant health library was the first thing that came up, and it was blunt about exactly the mistake I'd just made.

What I Learned About Why Pulling Backfires

Turns out mature ivy doesn't just rest against bark, it actually adheres to it with these small rootlets that grip the surface over time. The International Society of Arboriculture has a whole section on why this makes hand-pulling risky on established growth, which would have saved me that first mistake if I'd read it before instead of after. On a young vine that hasn't been there long, that grip is weak enough that pulling is fine. On three-year-old growth, the grip is strong enough that the bark sometimes loses the argument. And bark loss on a trunk isn't cosmetic, it's an actual wound that opens the tree up to decay and insects getting in where they normally couldn't.

Photo by Gianluca Buonaiuto on Pexels

Attempt Two: The Method That Actually Worked

The right approach, once I figured it out, is a lot less satisfying in the moment but way better for the tree. Cut through every vine stem at the base, in a band around knee height, then cut again a foot or so higher and remove that middle section. Then just leave the rest of the vine, the part still gripping higher up the trunk and into the lower branches, alone. Don't touch it. Let it die on its own.

The Waiting Part Was the Hardest Part

I am not a patient person and this method requires patience. It took close to six weeks of summer heat before the leaves on the upper section had fully browned and the stems had dried enough to lose their grip. For the first two of those weeks the tree honestly looked worse than before, half green vine, half brown dead vine, which is not a great look if you're doing this for someone as a favor and they're watching it happen from their kitchen window.

The Payoff Once It Dried Out

Once it had actually desiccated, the difference in effort was dramatic. What resisted real force two weeks earlier came off with barely a tug once dead. No bark tearing, no fighting with it. I worked from the top of the accessible growth downward, and most sections just released once I applied gentle pressure. The parts I'd cut and left alone came off far easier than the sections I'd impatiently tried to pull early, before they were fully dried.

What We Found Once the Trunk Was Actually Visible

This was the part that made the whole project worth it beyond just cosmetics. Once three years of ivy was off that trunk, there was a section of bark on the north side that looked discolored and slightly sunken compared to the rest, something neither of us had any way of knowing was there while it was covered. Neither of us knew what it meant, but it seemed worth having someone who actually does this for a living take a look rather than guessing.

Photo by Steffen Rühlmann on Pexels

Getting a Second Opinion on What We Found

We had the local arborists who handle this kind of thing come out and take a look at the spot, since neither of us wanted to just assume it was fine. Turned out to be early-stage decay, caught early enough that it was manageable rather than something that had been quietly progressing under vine cover for who knows how long. That alone justified the whole three-week ordeal of dealing with the vine in the first place. If we'd just left the ivy on because it looked established and fine, that spot could have kept getting worse for years without either of us knowing.

The Root Problem We Still Have to Deal With

Cutting the vine handled the trunk, but the roots are still very much alive in the ground around the base, and ivy roots left in place will just send up new shoots given the chance. Rutgers Cooperative Extension confirms this is basically guaranteed with English ivy specifically unless the root crown is dug out or treated directly. We're planning to dig out what we can reach this fall, since digging is the more reliable option compared to just watching for regrowth and hoping we catch it early. Middletown Tree Service mentioned they see this exact resprouting issue constantly on properties near us where someone removed the visible vine years ago and never dealt with the roots underneath.

The Part I Underestimated Going In

I genuinely thought this would be a Saturday afternoon project when my neighbor first asked. It ended up spanning close to two months from first cut to fully cleared trunk, and that's before accounting for the follow-up conversation about the bark discoloration and scheduling an actual assessment. If I'd known the real timeline going in, I probably would have set expectations differently with her from the start instead of both of us assuming it'd be done well before her husband was back on his feet.

What Surprised Me About the Cost Comparison

Doing it myself cost basically nothing but time, which felt like the obvious win going in. But once you factor in what a professional assessment of that trunk discoloration would have cost anyway, since we ended up needing one regardless, the actual savings from doing the vine removal myself were smaller than I'd assumed. If the tree hadn't turned out to have that hidden issue, the math would look different, but there's no way to know that in advance, which is honestly the whole argument for having a professional look at a heavily vined trunk sooner rather than after months of DIY work.

What I'd Tell Anyone Starting This Project

Portrait of a best friend… this lovely old backyard tree… when we looked at this house 24 years ago, this tree spoke to me… “stay” she whispered… and we did… and as the years have flowed on, she has grown older and craggy (and so have I) but her beauty is indisputable… her delicate leaves are just beginning to change from green to a holy magenta color… and in a few weeks they will rain down, day after day, carpeting the ground beneath her in a hot glow of brilliance, until her branches are bare… those dark bare branches will draw lines against the cold winter sky… skeletal, and meandering, shaping the gentle sunsets into a mosaic… and then, come spring, buds that will be leaves will appear once more… and on hot summer days her shade will be our joy… but, we are here now… this gorgeous November morning… and once again I tell her “thank you, I am so happy we stayed”💫

i love this tree

I have been in love with this tree ever since I met it 21 years ago…

A tradition when moving into a new space is to go to the closest Walmart and find something living in the plant section that I can rescue. This was the living green thing I found in a shoved together stack of ‘special buy’ tropicals in the middle of a box store aisle in March 2019. We share most mornings together – I with my coffee, the plant drinking in the light. This one, tangled and happy on…

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