This is the story about a 45-minute video on how to prune Mesquite and Palo Verde trees by Angelo Romeo. Feel free to stop reading, but if have at least one Mesquite or Palo Verde tree that you need to prune and don’t feel confident about doing it, you might want to read on.

Like most people around Tucson, I have several Mequites and Palo Verdes around my home. I love how they look and I want them to grow larger, especially on the west side of my home so I can have more shade on my house during the hot summer.

I know that pruning is an important to get big healthy trees, but I’ve been unsure how to do it. And because I don’t want to hurt the trees, slow their growth, or reduce their lifespan, I’ve been hesitant about doing anything. Worse yet, I’ve also been unwilling to pay someone to do it for me. Call me stuck.

Then I met Angelo Romeo. Anglelo is a professional tree trimmer and licensed arborist here in Tucson. After teaching me a few things, he told me about an an instructional video he made for folks like me so that I’d could learn what to do and prune the trees myself.

Angelo was a natural teacher and obviously knew what he was doing. So even though I had read pruning guides before and still felt unsure about what to do, I decided to give Angelo a shot and pay the $12 for the 45-minute download

Totally worth it. In addition to teaching the principles and techniques behind pruning, he also gives advice about tools, planting, and watering too. There’s no fluff or hard sales pitch. It’s not fancy in anyway. It’s just a really helpful guide. You can preview it on YouTube.

After watching the video I was excited to give it a try. It was fun and I’m happy with the results. So happy, I’ve been talking about tree trimming a little too much and I wrote this post.

If none of this fits your life, you can just be happy for me! But if this sounds like something you could use, go pay Angelo a few bucks for his hard work and get the video from his website.