yes you could ... but you are going to be looking at a big brown hole for a very long time ...

and perhaps forever .... if its on the north side of the plant ...

when it all boils down... time for it to go ... but ... why not try what your are thinking.... with the knowledge if you dont like the result ... its going to go anyway ...

its way out of scale for the deck.. house ... and pergola anyway

ken

Mark this down folks-I completely agree with Ken on this one, lol! Taller materials such as this arb cluster, when planted off corners of tall houses, can work. But blobbed right in front of everything as this one is just doesn't add anything to the composition. And also, Ken is correct in that you may as well try it, knowing that a severe basal pruning may be your next move. What will you have lost?

Kinda funny, because if you saw my low-slung house-it's actually story and 1/2 but doesn't appear so from the front-I have a species (or it may be an old cultivar but looks like the wild plant) every bit as imposing as this, right about front/center, plus its mate at left corner. But somehow-maybe I'm the only one that thinks so-it doesn't look obtrusive like this one does. Mine is single-leader though, if you don't happen to notice a secondary leader that has wound itself around the main over many decades. In any case, I am certifiably crazy and I like my big old arb better than the house itself, so mine is staying. But this 3-pronger or whatever it is, just doesn't do it for me. The one on the corner swoops out most gracefully, again just as the wild species tree does all over the northwoods along rivers, etc.

aw come on tom .... we often agree ... you just take it to another level with all that knowledge jammed in your whompin big head ... lol ...

im usually looking at it from a suburban small lot homeowner point of view.. when you go all forestry on us ...

its not that we disagree... its that we teach from different ends of the equation ...

anyway.. thx for the kind words ... i like the company

ken

ps: you should explain your basal cut joke ...

You guys are on different pages....... in the same book.

I had a basal cut once. Haven't had a kid since.

Design wise, the tree doesn't work, but I can see it valuable as the only slice of shade in the area on a hot day.

The bed it's planted in is way too narrow, even if it wasn't there.

Can you remodeling the railing so the Arborvitae doesn't rub on it?

I wouldn't hesitate to cut out the offending leader leaving a large brown hole in the side. A good blast of the hose set on Jet will get rid of most of the dead growth. Rubbing it with a pair of gloves on will get rid of the stubborn ones and pruning the rest should do it. It will heal up in time. Maybe not as long as you might think.

I also wouldn't hesitate removing it right down to the ground. If you cut it right down to the soil level, that should take care of it. Any higher and it will probably sprout new growth. No need to take out the stump or have it ground down.

mike

Thanks guys. There are actually three large, pyramidal arborvitae trees at each corner of the deck. The one with the leader that leans against the deck faces the south. I would really hate to tear these trees out of there as we sort of like how they look, but if they look overgrown to you guys then maybe it is for the best. I guess it would make
sense to do what you guys suggest and cut down the leader that leans
against the deck to see how it looks.

You can pull these multi leader arbs back together again, no need to cut out any of the leaders. It will never look right again. Just buy green twine and loop around the trunks and pull it together. Not too tight at first, but as the tree begins to pull back together you can progressivly tighten further.

Then...evaluate the shape and you can do a somewhat aggressive prune to reshape the upper section into a more conical shape, and sheer up the sides as needed.

Your going to need a pretty tall ladder to accomplish this on that specimen, but it looks possible

Indeed, Mr. Ken and I do often agree. And he's exactly right about our varying perspectives. For my part, I like to think I inhabit both worlds, that of that weird place where all these plants originally came from-nature, and the equally interesting world of man-made artistry with living things called horticulture.

Yes, a basal pruning, as understood here, would be the final act, not unlike Mike's decision directly following the birth of his last child. Hey, I had that same treatment once! And his mention of this possibly less than beautiful clump of greenery offering shade where evidently none else exists is very similar to how I've felt about the big green thing in front of my house from time to time, albeit in our case, a great deal of shade has since developed all around. In fact, maybe ten/fifteen yrs. ago, a young monster called volunteer Norway maple, that I had rescued from a car crash some years prior, was showing every sign of it's soon swallowing up the entire front end of the house, so climbing saddle and saw were put to use, that tree being long gone. This was before I hated that plant quite as much as I do now. Heck, I bet it was twenty yrs. ago, maybe even more. Time flies, and you can quote me on that.

So Unc, you didn't post here to get instructions for a ton of work to do, but is there any chance you'd like to revamp the entire frontal lobe? Even with the side view you've provided us, I'm not sure, but it seems there may be room for a more substantial shade-producer, somewhere well ahead of all that fence/house business.

whatever you decide .. i would make a bed.. a good ten feet out ..... min .... and get some replacements growing ... leaving yourself enough room to remove theses later ..

again ... they are overly mature... very old .... and improperly planted ... even if you want to live near the denile river for a few more years ... the time will come .. when they need removal ...

the basal cur referred to is tongue in cheek.. meaning cut it to the ground.. and apply stump killer ...the ultimate pruning job...

and if they are that close to the porch .... just cut flush to the ground ..... treat stump with round up though technically thats not even necessary .. and then cover the stumps with mulch ....

in my MI ... these plants... one bad winter ... will be destroyed by a heavy snow followed by ice storm damage ... kinda surprised yours havent already ... see link

pretty nice house.. for an old hippie... lol

ken

https://www.google.com/search?q=arborvitae+snow+damage&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfzZampc_KAhVnsIMKHfgSBGkQ_AUICCgC&biw=922&bih=745&dpr=0.9#tbm=isch&q=arborvitae+snow+ice+damage

I agree with Ken. The specimen you show us would look like silly putty after 1 bad New England winter. I have 12 emerald greens that I inherited at the property as a privacy screen. Wouldn't plant them again, but they serve a purpose, so I am a slave to wrapping them up with twine every fall, in preparation for the winter.

I have some neighbors who's arbs looked like those in ken's link, and they were able to fix them the following spring, simply by tying the trunks back together again. Unless they snap, you can recover the shape. I have been aggressively sheering the top section of mine to be more conical, that shape combined with the denser (stronger) branching, should hopefully relive my of having to tie them up every year in the future.

Do we know where Unc lives? It seems to me these trees have endured considerably more than one winter, albeit location unknown. Arbs are not typical plants of snow-free areas, so this "split like a banana peel" thing may be getting over-amplified.

All that said-and as if I haven't made this abundantly clear by now, I hate these multi-leadered things, but for more reasons than just their alleged unsuitability in snow and/or ice. And I have seen this splitting phenomenon happen myself. But the main issue I've got with such plants is how very bastardized they are from the real thing-species Thuja occidentalis, a plant which, proven in my Wisconsin woods many times, is utterly qualified to handle snow. Not to mention, a far more imposing plant than these myriad icky cultivars. I continue to perceive that most responders in such threads have no idea what I'm talking about-native stands of this tree. I should think though that a true New Englander, at least from the northern half of that region, or a correspondent from northern Michigan (I know-not your home Ken) should have seen these remarkable plants, often in near-pure groves, in streamside swamps and even scrambling up moist hillsides. Oddly, in all the years I've participated on this board, not once have I gotten the sense that anybody has!

+om, It certainly doesn't happen every winter and if the snow melts fast enough to allow the plant to bounce back, no damage is done. I would say 3 out of the past 6 or 7 winters we have had storms that have caused all the multi-leader arbs, not wrapped or sheered very tightly to splay apart. I can't remember the year now, but 3 or 4 winters ago is when I decided to start wrapping them. We got a wet, heavy snowstorm that caused them to splay down, but the temps stayed very cold so the trees couldn't bounce back to their original state. A second storm dumped another foot or so, onto the already compromised trees and they stayed frozen down like that for at least a month or two until spring arrived. On the other hand, my single leader Green Giants had no issues.

To answer your question, I have never seen a natural grove of Thuja in the woods of Massachusetts. We do have a pretty impressive natural Chamaecyparis thyoides (Atlantic White Cedar) swamp, which is impressive, but never seen Thuja around here... And I walk the woods alot in search of brooms!

According to GoBotany.org:

Thuja occidentalis - Massachusetts extremely rare (S-rank: S1), endangered (code: E)

Guess I will have to head north to NH to see some of these natural stands

Thanks guys. We live in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. The previous owners of our house cabled the leaders of the arbs together so the heavy lake effect snow we typically receive during our harsh winters wouldn't end up damaging them like the ones shown in Ken's post above. I am still on the fence about removing the arbs since they provide nice shade. I guess it might be inevitable at some point, though.

Not at all saying it can't happen sc77. Best bet is to do as you do and plan for it-no doubt. Thanks for the report on T. o's range. I wasn't at all sure of its status in Mass.

As a kid, I got to walk through one of those Chamaecyparis thyoides swamps out there. Very cool. I guess thinking back to that trip-I sure wasn't the tree nut I am now but it was already starting to take hold-Maine probably is a place with lots of Thuja. I do remember the tamaracks there, and the two are, as I'm sure you're aware, common associates of one another.

Those are some large and nice arborvitaes. They appear to be DeGroots Spire? Or just basic Emerald Green? At any rate if it was me, I would cut off what you need to for the porch and let them grow. The pic where you cut away branches looks fine to me and the arborvitaes look healthy.

Agreed^. Even though I don't tend to like these double and triple-leadered plants, this is providing some benefits, and like Pete says above, those smaller areas cleared back to the trunk don't detract from the overall appearance. Besides, Thuja-any type-tend to have attractive trunks and bark.

Thank you for your help, guys. Do you know if there are any methods that would encourage new leaders to sprout up from the ground, or if there is a way to encourage new branches to grow from areas that have been cut back? The reason I ask is that one the arbs has a bare spot near its trunk where branches were cut back to allow sunlight to filter into a small garden located behind it.