I have a willow just like that, and planted another one at another property I used to own. It was obvious that both of mine were growing toward light, and although they don't appear to have overhead shade, they are shaded to one side by a much larger tree and it blocks the sun on some branches during parts of the day. Are you sure you aren't having that situation?

DID MY TREE HAVE A GENDER CHANGE PROCEDURE WITHOUT ME KNOWING?🤔🌳 I'm having the same willow tree white fluff problem here in New Orleans. I bought my house in 2011, with a huge willow tree in the backyard already there. It's a very large tree, so must be fairly old, but until this year it NEVER produced this AWFUL WHITE FLUFF,🌨 not until ABOUT 1 MONTH AGO-May 2024!) The white cottony fluff is attached to the seeds and floats out ALL OVER, looking like snow. I can't even go out back without breathing the stuff in, and it's at its worse from midday until dusk.🥺 I can't afford the nearly $1,000 to have the tree cut down (I'm retired, living on disablity alone👵🏻.) I know my poor neighbors are suffering with this stuff, from my backyard right into their front yards!😾 Why did this suddenly start happening after I've been living with this willow tree in my yard for 13 years?! Only thing that changed is, last summer we had a bad DROUGHT and it was extremely HOT every day. Anyway, the suggestions/answers to Mark's post here are not answers, they just say "plant a male tree next time." Well, I wouldn't have planted a willow tree at all, but it was already here and already massive with a big double trunk. Are GARDEN GAL and KEN suggesting that my tree is SUPER WOKE and had a sex change operation? How else do y'all tree experts propose that this just happened for the first time? Anyway, the tree isn't even healthy, 🤒 and the tree man said it SHOULD be removed because it's not well. However, it just keeps growing and EXPANDING. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But WHY is it SUDDENLY attacking us (me, my dogs, the neighbors) with the dreaded white fluff?! I really just want to at least understand what's making it doing this; I mean I've never done anything to this willow that might make it want to attack me in such a way! 😇 HELP!!!!!! 🏃🏻‍♀️🌨❄️🌿🌳🆘

Well so far I've had "experts" tell me the tree will likely die if I chop it off,... That it won't die if I do, (In fact that this is done purposely to make telephone poles etc) To cut it to the ground or get rid of the pool but also not to cut it to the ground. That it will look terrible if I top it, and I've seen actual pictures that dispute that. That it will get massive and top heavy and be more of a problem, but also that it wont ever get big again or be a problem and that it can be trimmed easier (and cheaper) if it does start getting too big.... That it was likely planted there to soak up excess water but then a dispute that it likes water but that there wont be excess water if I get it cut down, So I'm gonna wing it. I'm not cutting it to the ground. And I'm not letting it get any bigger either. Any bigger and if it's true that they only last 60 years, it will fall on my house and likely kill me. If I chop it off, I think it will look bad for one season and then look fine again. I think that it wont get as massive and if it starts to I will get it cut back cheaply before it becomes a monster. And... Ive read that by cutting it back, not only is it not detrimental to the tree, but it keeps the tree "young" and theoretically, if it was continued to be topped forever, the tree would actually never die. Thanks for the advice everyone but I gotta do what I gotta do. Tree experts are like doctors. You can always find one to disagree with the diagnoses or the solution.

Not a large weeping willow at all, it is genetically programmed to grow vastly larger than it is now. And since the main point of it is the long trailing branches having a bunch going on beneath it that will conflict physically and visually with these hanging streamers it would in fact be best to remove all the stuff you have in there now and grass the whole bed over. At least until the tree is much taller with a much more elevated crown. Right now it is still too low and small to be in a bed full of other objects. Especially that one upright growing shrub that sticks way up into the crown of the willow, producing a visual conflict of movement (branches of willow pointing down, branches of shrub pointing up) as well as an actual physical conflict where the growth of the two plants is colliding.