Advice about incorrect pruning of greengage or plum tree

ss2020jd

I wish I had checked this before but as they say hindsight is a wonderful thing. 

Our new home has a wonderful tree in the front garden, the owner said a greengage. Wanting to make sure I look after everything properly I checked with a qualified arborist about maintaining the trees. He seems very professional and only recommended minor pruning on certain trees.

This tree was touching the house and growing over the roof so he recommended trimming the tops and sides and one branch coming at an angle elsewhere. I asked if it was okay to do it at this time of year, having read that it was not recommended. He said it would be fine but now after researching everywhere it says it should not be pruned due to silver leaf so now I am worried they have caused damage and I could have potentially ruined the tree. 

If anyone has any experience with this or any advice what I can do I’d be grateful to hear. I don’t think I’d be using them again!

twopenny

Is it still mild weather where you live? Does it still have it's leaves?

I'm still learning with new trees but have had mature ones that survived all the mistakes I made. Silver leaf is not a permenant disaster for fruiting but may affect the health of the tree.

You can get away with a lot with mature trees, they have the stamina.

Love greengages, if you've never eaten them from a garden tree you are in for a treat. I'm quite envious.

ss2020jd

twopenny said:

Is it still mild weather where you live? Does it still have it's leaves?

I'm still learning with new trees but have had mature ones that survived all the mistakes I made. Silver leaf is not a permenant disaster for fruiting but may affect the health of the tree.

You can get away with a lot with mature trees, they have the stamina.

Love greengages, if you've never eaten them from a garden tree you are in for a treat. I'm quite envious.

Thank you so much for your reply. That has given me hope. 

It is mild at the moment in the daytime and sunny. It still has leaves and judging by the height I would say is a mature tree too. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that will be the case.
I’ve never eaten them from a garden tree so hope I get to do so yet!