If there’s any group of trees that don’t need an introduction, it’s the redwoods. Given their immense size, incredible beauty, and iconic status, they’re familiar to just about everyone in the State of California.
But being familiar with redwood trees and providing them with the care and support they need are two different things, and many homeowners don’t know where to start. We’ll try to help by sharing the basic care requirements of redwoods, as well as some of the most common issues they suffer.
But first, we’ll start by laying out the basics of the three redwood species found growing on California properties.
California’s Redwood Trees
While several redwood species lived in the distant past, there are only three living species within the subfamily Sequoioideae. We’ll explain some of the basics of these species below:
Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
The tallest tree species on Earth, the coastal redwood, is capable of exceeding 350 feet in height in its natural habitat. Native to a narrow band along the fog-influenced coast of northern California and southwestern Oregon, it is a fast-growing evergreen conifer that favors cool, humid climates with consistently moist but well-drained soil.
In landscape settings, the tree’s immense mature size, shallow root system, and sensitivity to heat and drought are the primary management considerations.
Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)
While it doesn’t grow quite as tall as the coastal redwood, the giant sequoia is the most massive tree species by volume. Some documented trees have diameters exceeding 30 feet, and they may live for millennia.
Native to scattered groves on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada, this evergreen conifer requires full sun and deep, well-drained mountain soils with reliable moisture, making it poorly suited to compacted or poorly drained urban sites. Most problems in urban areas stem from site incompatibility rather than weakness inherent to the species.
Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)
Dawn redwood is a large but more modestly sized redwood, typically reaching 100 to 150 feet at maturity, instead of climbing 200 feet or more into the sky as the coast redwood and sequoia do. Native to a small relict area of central China, it was thought to be extinct until a living specimen was discovered in the 1940s.
Unlike the other redwoods, the dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer that sheds its leaves each fall. It’s also more adaptable, and it tolerates a broad range of soils, including seasonally wet and suburban sites.
How to Care for Your Redwood Trees: A California Homeowner’s Guide
Redwoods growing in the wild can take care of themselves, as they’ve adapted to their habitats over millions of years. So, when they’re planted or grow naturally in residential or commercial lots, they typically require supplemental care to ensure they remain safe and healthy.
This means doing the following five things:
1. Plant the Right Tree in the Right Space
It’s obviously too late to worry about this if you already have a redwood growing on your property, but if you’re planning on planting a new tree soon, be sure to select an appropriate spot in your yard. This means ensuring:
- Sufficient Space: All three redwood species are large trees, and the coastal redwood and giant sequoia can fairly be characterized as gargantuan. In fact, they’re really only suitable for very large properties. So, be sure your property is large enough to accommodate trees that may reach 150 to 300 feet in height.
- Proper Soil Composition: All three species prefer slightly different soil types, but they all require deep, loamy, slightly acidic soil. They also require soil that provides good drainage and is unlikely to thrive in places with hard-packed, clay soil types. Of the three, the dawn redwood best tolerates suburban soil.
- Suitable Soil Moisture: All three species require moderately moist (but well-aerated) soil to thrive. But that doesn’t mean they can grow well in perpetually wet areas. The coast redwood and dawn redwood will both tolerate short periods of saturation, but they won’t survive extended floods.
- Appropriate Sun Exposure: The giant sequoia requires full sunlight to thrive throughout its life, while the coastal redwood and dawn redwood can both survive with light shade during the early years of their lives. Nevertheless, they’ll require full sun exposure once they’re mature.
- Proper Location: In addition to finding a place on your property with proper soil composition, suitable moisture, and the right level of sunlight, you also need to ensure you don’t plant these trees too close to your home or hardscapes, as the roots may cause significant damage.
2. Apply a Layer of Mulch
Whether you have a sapling or a 150-foot-tall tree it’s important to apply a 2- to 4-inch-thick layer of mulch below the tree’s canopy. Start the mulch about 6 to 12 inches away from the trunk (you don’t want the mulch to physically contact the trunk, as this will lead to decay), continuing all the way out to the drip line (the edge of the canopy).
Mulch provides a variety of benefits for redwoods, including:
- It improves the soil’s structure.
- It contributes organic matter to the soil.
- It helps retain moisture.
- It moderates soil temperature extremes.
- It protects the trunk and roots from mechanical damage.
Just be sure to use an organic mulch, such as bark chips, rather than rocks or synthetic materials.
3. Provide Supplemental Water When Appropriate
It’s important to provide supplemental water to all three redwood species at two key times:
- Prolonged droughts or periods of dry weather
- In the first one to three years following planting or transplantation
The best way to do this is with a drip irrigation system, soaker hose, or some other method that allows for a slow, controlled release of water. This helps prevent the water from collecting on the surface and running off.
If you have to use a garden hose to water your redwoods, be sure to provide lots of water on a relatively infrequent basis, compared to irrigating grass or ornamental plants. This helps encourage the trees to produce deep root systems.
4. Fertilize Only When Needed
Applying fertilizer to your tree’s root zone can be very helpful for counteracting the deficiencies often at play in urban and suburban areas, and it can ensure that your tree has all of the nutrients it needs to fuel its growth.
However, you don’t want to just purchase the first bag of fertilizer you see and start dumping it around the roots. Instead, you want to first conduct a soil test to identify the specific deficiencies in the soil. You can then choose a fertilizer that’s specifically formulated to address these needs.
5. Monitor Your Trees’ Health
Perhaps the most important step in caring for any tree — be it a redwood, oak, or jacaranda — is monitoring it closely for signs of trouble. Trees often suffer from hidden threats for long periods of time before producing any outwardly visible symptoms, which means that by the time you notice something is wrong, the tree is already in serious peril.
So, take a few minutes each week to walk around your redwood tree and inspect it (you’ll need binoculars to inspect the canopy if it’s a large specimen). If you see any signs of poor health or simply feel like something is “off,” contact an ISA-certified arborist at once and have an assessment conducted.
This will give you the best chance of addressing the issue before your tree’s fate is sealed.
Trimming & Pruning Redwood Trees in California
Unlike some other tree species, redwood trees usually don’t need a lot of pruning. In fact, most pruning-related problems occur when they’re pruned too often, rather than not enough, as redwoods do a pretty good job of self-pruning as they grow.
Generally speaking, there are only three times in which you’ll want to have your redwood pruned:
- During the early years of a tree’s life, to establish a single leader and good overall structure. This is known as structural pruning, and it’s best handled by a skilled arborist with experience pruning young redwoods.
- Every three to five years, you’ll want to have the crown “cleaned.” This involves the deliberate and careful removal of dead, diseased, or decayed branches that may present a safety risk.
- On a case-by-case basis, you may be able to have the tree pruned to address problems like blocked sight lines. However, this must be carried out by a certified arborist to avoid creating safety hazards.
It’s rarely a good idea to remove the lower branches of a large redwood, as this can effectively raise the tree’s center of gravity and make it more susceptible to windthrow.
It’s also important to understand the difference between tree pruning and tree trimming.
Trimming involves the arbitrary removal of branches or foliage to yield a desired aesthetic or management-related goal, while pruning is the term applied to the selective and deliberate removal of branches or foliage, while keeping the tree’s health and vigor in mind. Pruning is acceptable in the cases outlined above, but trimming is almost always a bad idea for redwoods.
Given the size of redwood trees, homeowners should never try to prune a mature redwood tree themselves. Instead, you’ll want to partner with a certified arborist, who can perform the pruning work safely, while using the proper tools.
Common Redwood Tree Problems in California
Despite their beauty and all of the environmental benefits they provide, redwood trees can cause a number of problems that homeowners will have to deal with. A few of the most noteworthy include:
Poor Drainage and Root Disease
Redwoods — particularly coast redwoods — decline quickly in waterlogged or compacted soils, leading to fungal diseases like Phytophthora, Armillaria, and Heterobasidion setting in. These infections lead to root decay, reduced anchorage, thinning crowns, and in advanced cases, structural failure or sudden decline.
Root rot in redwoods is almost always caused by site conditions, such as drainage issues, grade changes, and chronic moisture imbalances.
Shallow, Wide-Spreading Roots
All redwoods develop extensive surface root systems, which can cause them to damage landscapes, driveways, and sidewalks. These shallow roots must also compete with turf grasses and ornamentals, which predisposes them to stress. Additionally, these shallow root systems are quite sensitive to soil disturbances and grade changes.
Windthrow and Structural Instability
In the wild, redwoods grow in forests that help shield them from strong winds. But when grown in typical residential landscapes, they lack this kind of protection. Combined with their large size and shallow root systems, this makes redwoods quite susceptible to windthrow.
Poor pruning practices, such as the improper removal of lower trunk branches, can exacerbate this threat and make them even more likely to topple in the wind.
Climate and Site Mismatch
All three redwood species have adapted to live in their natural habitats. So, when they’re planted in places that fail to provide suitable conditions, they can suffer from:
- Heat stress (especially coast redwood trees grown in inland areas)
- Drought stress
- Poor growth or chronic decline
Dawn redwood tolerates broader conditions and is more adaptable to suburban lots, but it will still fail on dry, compacted sites without sufficient supplemental irrigation.
Bark Beetles
Bark beetles affecting redwoods (including Phloeosinus species) are typically secondary pests that colonize trees already stressed by drought, root damage, or disease. But beetle presence can be a strong indicator of underlying stress, as healthy redwoods rarely suffer significant damage from bark beetle activity alone.
Signs Your Redwood Tree May Require Removal
Unfortunately, redwood trees can sometimes suffer from problems that result in hazardous situations, which will ultimately require their removal. This decision should always be made in conjunction with a certified arborist (rather than a generic “tree guy”) and only after careful deliberation.
A few of the signs that should prompt you to contact an arborist include:
- Cracks: Cracks are a very concerning sign as they demonstrate that the wood fibers in a tree are already failing. Not all cracks necessitate removal, and it’s important to assess their orientation (vertical or horizontal), size, and location when determining whether the tree requires removal.
- Large Cavities: Many trees (particularly long-lived species like redwoods) develop hollows at some point in time. But while hollows can be aesthetically charming and provide habitat for wildlife, they are typically associated with significant internal decay, which may compromise a tree’s structural integrity.
- Changing Lean Angle: Trees can often remain safe while growing at an angle (rather than straight up), but it’s important to distinguish between those that develop a lean gradually over the course of years and those that start leaning (or begin leaning more) in a short time. The former are often safe; the latter are always a serious hazard.
- Mounding Soil: Mounding soil near the base of a tree often indicates that the tree’s root system is failing or that the soil has lost its ability to properly anchor the tree. In either case, it is imperative that you keep people away from the tree and have an ISA-certified arborist assess it immediately, as it could fall at any minute.
- Mushrooms or Conks: Mushrooms and conks growing on the tree’s woody tissue or the ground above the root zone often indicate the presence of decay fungus. Unfortunately, these fungal fruiting bodies often last only a few days, so it is important to have an arborist inspect the tree quickly to determine the level or risk it presents.
- Crown Dieback: The progressive death of branches in a tree’s canopy can often signal the presence of pests or disease. And while these things may not cause a tree to fall over immediately, they can progress, ultimately weakening the tree if left unchecked. But with prompt assessment and treatment, they may recover and survive.
- Needle Drop: Seasonal needle drop is normal for dawn redwoods, but if they begin dropping needles earlier than normal, it can be a sign of pests, disease, or stress. On the other hand, needle drop (meaning all of the leaves in the canopy — not a small amount) in giant sequoias or coast redwoods is always a concerning sign.
Note that you’ll often need a tree-removal permit before you can legally remove a redwood tree (or any mature tree) in several California municipalities. But the professionals at Adney Tree Service will be happy to help you navigate the permit process and provide any guidance you may need.
Adney Tree Service: Providing Redwood Tree Care in Clinton Township, MI
Whether your redwood trees are experiencing problems or you simply have a question about your trees, the professionals at Adney Tree Service are standing by. We’ve been providing artisan-caliber tree-care services across California’s Central Coast region for more than 10 years, and we’d love to do the same for you.
Contact us today to see the Adney Tree Service difference yourself!
Sources & References
- National Park Service – “Sequoias and Redwoods”
An authoritative overview explaining the biology, growth characteristics, and ecological significance of giant sequoias and coast redwoods.
https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/sequoiasandredwoods.htm - UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden – “Redwood Exhibits”
An educational resource detailing redwood species characteristics, history, and interpretation used for public learning and research exhibits.
https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk1546/files/inline-files/redwood_exhibits_0.pdf - University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources – “Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)”
A science-based profile covering coast redwood identification, growth habits, distribution, and forest management considerations.
https://ucanr.edu/site/forest-research-and-outreach/coast-redwood-sequoia-sempervirens - Tree Care Industry Association – “ANSI A300 Part 1: Pruning Standards”
The industry-recognized standard outlining best practices and performance requirements for tree pruning operations.
https://treecareindustryassociation.org/business-support/ansi-a300-standards/part-1-pruning/
