Stop The Mutilation!

In coming days, landscape crews will descend upon this city and many others throughout Texas and the South, loppers in hand. The annual mutilation of crape myrtles will commence. When they have finished, assisted by well-meaning but deluded homeowners who think this is necessary, these lovely trees — they are trees — will be chopped down to ugly nubs. Eventually, summer blooms will disguise the nubs, but it is still mutilation. Arborists go so far as to call it “crape murder.” Crape myrtles have boomed in popularity because they thrive in summer heat and bloom for months. They line...

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