NBates said:

Hi Roughbark,

Thanks so much for getting back to us.

I’ve attached photos here so you can have a look.

Hopefully it’s just the dry, but we’d be very grateful for your opinion.

The tree won’t miss the lower branches. In fact it will grow better without them. It doesn’t need them any more. Which is also as much of the reason why they are dying off.

You may like an anecdote or two about “why did you plant that there?”. A question I asked my mother when she had a lemon scented gum lopped in the back yard. I asked why get it lopped? She said it is too big for the spot. Which brought the question well why plant it there? she said, “it was only little at the time”. This in turn led to a lifetime of learning about trees, for me.

In the case of my yellow box in the front yard. At the time I told Mrs rb that no way should we plant a yellow box in that spot and she was adamant that she wanted it there. 40 years later she still defends the decision but when a big bit lands on the house I’m sure she may revise that position. I’ll need to take it down to put solar panels on the house anyway.

Now I’ll warn you of the same problem. A yellow box is too big of a tree for small spaces. It may not be apparent for 30 or 40 years but by then it is an expensive operation to remove large trees from small spaces. Which in itself is sad because the same tree could have survived hundreds of years in bliss otherwise by simply having been planted in a more safe and secure site.