Trees in Allegheny Cemetery get some much needed pruning from Bartlett volunteers

Tree Pitts­burgh Tree Care Assis­tant Ter­rance Shef­fey, Bartlett employ­ees Andrew Tomaskovic, John Reit­mey­er, Jere­my New­ton, Sean Dingess, Burl­ton Grif­fith, and Frank Booths.

Ear­ly this spring, Tree Pitts­burgh had the plea­sure of work­ing with a group of arborists and den­dri­cians from the Bartlett Tree Experts who vol­un­teered their time to help with struc­tur­al prun­ing of 20 young trees in Alleghe­ny Ceme­tery. These trees, most­ly elms, can be seen grow­ing along the inside of the ceme­tery wall along Stan­ton Avenue. Tree Pittsburgh’s Tree Care and Restora­tion Coor­di­na­tor, Jake Milof­sky, expressed the impor­tance of prun­ing these trees.

“We’ve found that Prince­ton Amer­i­can elm trees grow extreme­ly fast and there­fore need to be pruned aggres­sive­ly dur­ing their estab­lish­ment phase,” said Milof­sky. “These trees had already grown beyond our reach, so it was great to have the help of pro­fes­sion­als with tree climb­ing abil­i­ties to con­duct this extreme­ly valu­able work.”

Tree Pitts­burgh Tree Care Assis­tant, Ter­rance Shef­fey, receives a les­son on tree climb­ing equip­ment from Bartlett Arborist, Burl­ton Griffith.

The crew of eight vol­un­teers worked for three hours on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing in late March to prune the trees, and the Alleghe­ny Ceme­tery assist­ed the project by dis­pos­ing of the many cut branch­es. Burl­ton Grif­fith, a Bartlett Arborist, enjoyed work­ing on the project. “We are thrilled to be part of the Tree Ten­der mis­sion and look for­ward to work­ing with Tree Pitts­burgh again in the future!” he said.

Bartlett work­ers climbed trees to care­ful­ly prune them.