The art of pollarding is very misunderstood & often confused with topping.  Really good subject to talk about Dan, Bravo.  Many commenters have asked how you start a pollard & stated that it must start by topping.

First, my definition of topping is the reduction of a tree without concern or understanding of tree needs or response. The first pollard should not be this, it should be reduction to chosen crotches that take into account the species of tree, space available, pruning interval, clearances, ease of maintenance, & aesthetic. When done properly it is very pleasing to the eye, but unfortunately this is not often the case. It is a rare tree pruner that understands & has the skills to do the first few pollards on a tree.

The second question that I noticed in a lot of the comments was can you pollard an older tree.  The answer is yes, but it is much riskier, takes more intense management, & loses a lot of the benefits of pollarding.  Larger cuts are to be avoided in order to minimize exposure of heartwood, but are not disallowed.  Also a key benefit of pollarding is keeping a tree small to fit the space, but also ease of maintenance.  Most of the time that I have begun a pollard it is for a homeowner with limited space & money so that they could prune it themselves for the foreseeable future. This has worked out quite well for many of my clients & their trees. This is not practical or advisable for larger trees or homeowners.

When I have done a severe reduction of a large tree to eventually become a pollard I do it in stages. Any decent arborist would call it hacking without knowing the plan.  I have only done it a few times & only when the alternative is tree removal.  It is a form of retrenchment into a new style of long term maintenance, almost always after some type of catastrophic failure. The process is to prune limbs out with significantly large cuts in the outer canopy, leaving an amount of low/interior canopy intact but trying to choose a final pollard location on one main head with partial sun exposure. The amount of intact canopy left has to keep the tree alive, while pushing the tree hard enough to make it want to resprout from the newly chosen knuckles. Usually on a yearly basis, but only based on tree response, this process is moved forward.  Reducing another large branch from above the remaining canopy to its pollarding knuckle. The initial knuckle head may or may not be pollarded at this time, usually only the largest resprouts are removed from this head, but smaller ones are left to encourage wound closure.  The knuckles that remain above the temporary canopy are repollarded or selectively reduced as practical to transition the tree into its eventual pollarded form. This process is continued until the entire canopy can be reduced to their final knuckles. It takes many years to do this properly and is expensive, but when the alternative is remove the tree & this process can keep it around, it is a viable option.

A long winded comment for a YouTube video. But, as usual, good questions can be short, but thoughtful answers to them are usually long.

Apparently all the reasons we started pollarding trees, historically are the same reason we started coppicing trees. The difference being, deer cannot reach the tasty new shoots

Very interesting that you went into depth on pollarding! It's everything you shouldn't do to trees, but which is still a common practice.
Here in Norway this is a standard practice in every city and town using Park Linden trees. Not a big fan when half the year all you see are rotten bare knuckles and ugly watersprouts 😅

Great job! We do a lot of "toping" here where I'm at and I dislike it strongly. I always try to get customers on a regular pollarding schedule about every 2-4 years, but it is hard to do because they usually don't want to do them again until they get scared of the tree again. I take great pride in what you have done here.👍 I have even told customers the benefits of pollarding regularly to reduce decay and I only have about 3 customers the regularly get pollarding over my 16 yrs experience. Great job Dan!! 💯

Hi Dan, just want to mention the Narrating, video quality and Audio were all awesome.  We could hear you up in the tree very well.
Never new much about the Pollarding process, so very informative.

The new growth, called Fodder. Used as feed for animals or weaving

Thankyou

Very cool. Never thought about street tree management for arborist. These pollarded trees look like Joshua trees almost. I enjoyed this video

Great video, many thanks.

Can you maybe do a video on how to start this process off, on a tree that has not yet been pruned?

A lot of details I wanted to learn from in here, it's not common where I live. Thanks for sharing!

Great information - thanks for sharing

Good work. I like pollards.

That's what this is called! I'm up in Canada. My neighbor has a tree like this, and I've seen them before. I think they're terribly ugly. It doesn't look like nature.

Yeeeee buddy

Nice work!
We in Europe are used to this type of pruning but even here in Belgium not everyone knows the difference between pollarding and topping
Topping is NOT pollarding.
Pollarding is a choice you make when the tree is still young , topping is chopping of big lims and stems to lower the hight of the tree without thinking about the health of the tree.
A good pollard doesn't have cuts larger then 10cm (4") in diameter, that way you will not cut into the heartwood of the shoot so the tree can sealoff the fibers. this way fungi are less likely to enter the wood. And as Dan meantioned the lims of a pollard have week connections and if cutted small enough the woun't fail.
When pruned as Dan explaned, the sugar of the tree will be stored in the knuckles, that way the tree has a large enoug storage of sugars to make new sprouts. The health of the tree will not suffer when done right, en pollards can grow verry old !!

Hi,
Do the knuckles ever get too big and heavy?  If they do get too big/heavy, how are they dealt with?  
Thanks so much for this video, it's been super helpful.

The issue with pollarding is with the regrowth. Many people who pollard trees do it a few times them stop because financially it costs a lot of money every 3 years. The regrowth gets bigger and it is never as strong. Pollard regrowth is weak and you shouldn't really leave it long to redo it because they can snap out.

Bonjour,
On appelle cette méthode "taille en-tête de chat ".
Il me semble avoir reconnu une photo d'une place de Sarlat la Canéda.
Bonne journée

How much time can it take for a pollared tree like the plane tree in the video to shoot enought leaves to set shade for the summer? I guess it would suck to walk through a street of pollared trees on a hot summer day!

Thanks for the video, i was part of pollarding a main avenue in Strasbourg for 2 of 6 weeks. 1400 plaine! How do ypu like thst electric husky?