My grandma planted this Autumn Blaze maple as a sapling back in 2012/2013 in honour of my grandpa's memory. Roughly 12 years later, it's not doing too great. I know that once a tree isn't doing so hot it's extremely hard to nurse it back to health, but I really want my grandma to feel as though we've tried every option available. I went to look at it today and the bark is peeling off the trunk at an alarming rate. It's not fully girdled yet but there are obvious insect bore holes. My general advice was to lose the grass right around the base and add a ring of mulch to prevent further damage to the bark when the lawn is mowed, remove the suckers at the base of the trunk, and make sure the tree is getting water during periods of drought. I know a lot of this might seem kind of superficial given the damage to the bark but I want to give it my all for my grandma. Any advice anyone else could share? Anything obvious that I'm missing? I also plan to collect and press leaves from the tree and maybe try to save some keys so in case the tree does die, the memory of my grandpa will survive.
by Honest-Art-99