So on our block there’s what’s technically a city right-of-way for a never-paved cross street, but practically it’s a walking path/park/community yard full of grass and trees, where people plant things

And I just passed through and this neighbor that planted a tree three years ago trimmed it and he clearly had no idea what he was doing and it’s painful to look at

Like, I even get what he was going for! It came in all beanstalky with thin trunk and branches, and he was trying to train it back into a more compact, thicker shape.

(It came in that way cause it’s stretching for sunlight cause he planted it somewhere one year from being canopied over even with a better, clear location 5 yards away, but that’s neither here nor there)

But what you should do in that situation, you take your too-long branch and you find a branch off it heading in the right direction and trim back to leave that as the main branch.

He just lopped off branches square where he wanted, resulting in an ugly blunt stub, the branches off it two feet back all competing with each other to be the leader off at 60° angles, and without any apical buds to suppress them a whole hedgehog of waterspouts going straight up

Did what I could to salvage it, I’d offer to take over tending, but I don’t know how to have the “give it up, I can’t stand your work” conversation