Trim a mulberry tree in the dormant season. In Albuquerque that means December through early March, before the buds swell and the sap starts running. Take out dead, crossing and inward-growing wood first, then reduce height by cutting back to a lateral branch or to an established pollard knuckle, never to a bare stub. Mulberries bleed heavily and seal large wounds slowly, so the fewer big cuts the better. And in Albuquerque the tree comes with a rule of its own: the city's 1994 pollen ordinance means you can prune the mulberry you have, but you can never plant another one.
The tree in question is almost always the fruitless white mulberry (Morus alba, the male cultivars), the fast lawn shade tree planted with the 1950s-80s houses across the Northeast Heights, Uptown, the International District and Taylor Ranch. The city's 2014 i-Tree assessment ranked it second in leaf area of any species in Albuquerque, and it has been banned from planting since 1994.
When to prune trees in New Mexico: the Albuquerque calendar
The window for heavy pruning of mulberry, Siberian elm, ash, honey locust and fruit trees is December through early March: the trees are dormant, the structure is visible, elm bark beetles are not flying, and the wound has the spring flush ahead of it to start closing. For mulberry, late February is usually the sweet spot, once the hardest freezes are mostly done and days sit above about 50°F, which is what the standard wound-sealing advice is really about.
- Late March through May: wind season and bud break. Mulberries bleed from every cut once the buds swell, and the 65 mph gusts of March 6-7, 2025 showed what unpruned limbs do in this stretch. Wind-damage cleanup and clearance cuts only.
- June: pre-monsoon heat. Light clearance only; a heavy reduction exposes the interior to sunscald on a tree already under stress.
- Mid-June through mid-September: monsoon. Storm-damage response, not scheduled reduction.
- October and November: the second window. Leaves are down, deadwood and mistletoe are visible, and deadwood, clearance and light shaping are back on.
If you missed the window. Searches for mulberry trimming peak in April, when the tree has leafed out and someone has noticed it on the roof. Take the dead, broken and roof-touching wood now, keep the cuts small, and book the real reduction or pollard cut for next winter. A leafed-out mulberry can lose a limb or two; it should not lose a third of its crown in the heat.
How to trim a mulberry: the cuts that work
Mulberry tree trimming follows the same order of operations as any shade tree, with one adjustment: keep big cuts to a minimum, because a mulberry wound much over 2 inches across seals slowly and often decays behind the cut.
- Dead, diseased, broken and rubbing wood first. Cut just outside the branch collar, the slight swelling where the branch meets the trunk. Never flush, never a stub.
- Downward, inward and crossing growth. The limbs that will rub, shade the interior or grow into the house.
- Water sprouts. The straight vertical shoots along old cuts and heavy limbs. Remove them at the base; they are weakly attached.
- Reduce height the right way. On a tree that has never been pollarded, cut back to a lateral at least a third the diameter of the limb removed, so it takes over as the new end: a drop-crotch reduction that keeps the natural form. On a pollarded tree, cut back to the knuckle every year or two: to the knob, not into it, never leaving a stub.
- Clearance. Roof, walls, sidewalk (7 feet over sidewalks, 14 feet over the street under the Street Tree Ordinance) and the PNM service drop. PNM does not trim the drop; it disconnects it on request so a private crew can prune safely.
Roof-touching and line-touching limbs are why most Heights mulberries get cut. On a tree that has gone five or ten years without one, keep this season's removal modest and finish next winter. Our tree trimming page covers crown reduction, raising and thinning in detail.
Tree topping vs pruning: what Albuquerque's pollarded mulberries actually are
Search results call Albuquerque's knobbed winter mulberries topping. Most are not, and the difference decides whether the tree lives another twenty years.
Topping is indiscriminate heading: sawing through big limbs at arbitrary points, wherever the height happens to be, leaving stubs. The tree answers with a broom of fast, weakly attached sprouts around each stub and with decay working down behind every cut. The industry warns against it for good reason.
Pollarding is a system. It starts when the tree is young, with heading cuts at a chosen height, and the crew returns every year or two to cut new growth back to the swollen knuckle that forms at each point. The cuts are always small and always in the same place, so the callus stays healthy. It is a centuries-old European technique and a genuine Albuquerque tradition on fruitless mulberries, which tolerate it well.
Crown reduction is the third option: cutting back to laterals to lower height while keeping the tree's natural shape. It is the right cut for a mulberry that has never been pollarded and has simply outgrown its lot.
So the rule: a mulberry pollarded young can keep being pollarded indefinitely; a big untouched mulberry should be reduced, not topped; and a tree topped years ago and then abandoned has a sprout crown on decayed stubs that needs a look before anyone climbs it. Our tree topping page has the fuller conversation, including when we will top on request after a written explanation: an existing mulberry pollard, utility clearance, or a customer who has heard the trade-offs and still wants it.
The pollen ordinance: why you prune the mulberry you have
Albuquerque's Pollen Control Ordinance (Article 9-12, adopted 1994, amended 2004) prohibits planting or selling any mulberry and any cypress inside city limits, and restricts most elms, cottonwoods and male junipers. The reason is pollen: the fruitless males were planted because they make no berries, and being male they make pollen instead, among the worst spring allergens in the city. Existing trees are grandfathered; nobody has to remove one. But a mulberry that dies or comes down cannot be replaced in kind.
That changes the economics of every mulberry in the city. A replacement from the approved palette (honey locust, Chinese pistache, desert willow, New Mexico olive; the ABCWUA Treebate covers 25% of the cost, up to $100 a year) needs many years to cast the shade a fifty-year-old mulberry throws today. So the sensible strategy is to keep the old tree pruned, watered and sound as long as it is safe. That is why so many Albuquerque mulberries are cut year after year: the owner is buying time.
When a mulberry should not be trimmed, and when it should come down
Not every mulberry should take a heavy cut this winter.
- Drought-stressed trees. The metro sat in extreme-to-exceptional drought through 2025 and 2026, on top of 8.84 inches of rain in a normal year. A tree with thin foliage, tip dieback or early leaf drop is living on reserves, and a big reduction can push it over. Deadwood and clearance only, plus deep watering, and a dedicated drip line if a xeriscape conversion cut it off from lawn water.
- Topped-and-abandoned trees. Hollow knuckles, mushrooms at the base, a split between co-dominant stems, or long sprouts swaying on rotten stubs. That is a tree health assessment or tree removal conversation, not a trim, and it is the one mulberry nobody should climb without looking first.
Two paperwork notes. A mulberry in the sidewalk strip is a street tree and needs a City Forester permit before trimming or removal; a tree wholly on private property needs no city permit. In High Desert, Sandia Heights and Tanoan, removals also need the HOA committee's sign-off.
Every job starts with a free written estimate through our free estimate form. Tell us the tree, the neighborhood and whether it has ever been pollarded, and we will walk it with you.
Mulberries in the Northeast Heights
The Northeast Heights is mulberry country. ZIP 87110's median build year is 1960 and 87112's is 1972, so the trees planted with those houses are 50 to 70 years old, shading Uptown, Cherry Hills, Heritage Hills, Academy Acres North and the western tracts of the quadrant. Spring wind season, when the March 2025 storms gusted to 65 mph, is when unpruned mulberry limbs land on roofs and pull down service drops, and the Heights pick up more snow than the valley. Elms, mulberries and honey locusts, December through early March, are the quadrant's winter work.
Roque Tree Service LLC has been trimming Albuquerque trees since 2015, licensed (NM license #L1313927408), bonded and insured, working from Southeast Albuquerque with our own boom truck and chipper. See our Northeast Heights page for the quadrant's tree specifics, from the elm tracts along I-25 to the piñon-juniper lots at the top of Tramway.