Mom cut down my beloved magnolia tree
- current state - remaining trunks + small new shoots.
- original size
It's at the house I grew up in, and was meant to inherit. My mother lives here, and I visited after 2 years away. She must've cut it a year+ ago.
I guess I'm posting as I'm processing this heartbreak, and perhaps there would be people here who understand or have advice.
I grew up playing on it with my cousins and climbing its low long branches. It would flower multiple times a year as if deciding it were again spring.
It's a saucer magnolia that opened in a wide spreading shape, 3-5 meter height/width ("before" photo). The extending branches have been cut - the lower trunks remain - about 1.5 meters high (see Current photo). Originally the tree grew as ~5 trunks all from the root, about 6-8 inches in diameter each. The tree has been here since before we bought the house - 35+ years .
Many new small green shoots are sprouting from the stumps, but i don't know if these are viable to become new substantial branches, or how many years it would take. And I dont know if it can spread out again outward horizontally. Would it help to find an arborist to help tend to it? In Brooklyn NY.
She cut it because she got really into gardening roses. My tree was blocking her sunlight. It's a strange feeling, that I dont know how to reconcile, when the person that did this is not some stranger or adversary. But someone who is just not a very compassionate mother. I had actually asked her not to do it, but I don't think I made it abundantly clear it would break my heart - as I hadn't realize she would really do it. Then she made her choice. It no longer feels like home.