Upper half of my tree is dead over last winter.

[zogman]

Me and my wife bought this house six years ago and this tree was planted on the property well before that it’s probably been planning to 20 years so it’s been well established. We don’t know winters in Wisconsin can be tough We noticed in spring that this tree started to show signs of the upper half was dead and then the lower have started having shoots come out to try and overtake the area on the upper half. Right now it’s kind of big and bulky and the lower half were the trunk is everything is trying to grow in order to stay alive. Is it better for me to cut the upper portion off or Am I better off just letting it do it’s thing?

 

[buzz sawyer]

Can we see a picture of where the trunk meets the ground? Just a guess, but it could have been planted too deep and girdling roots are just now affecting the tree.

 

[zogman]

Here, I hope this helps? It did fine for multiple years ( I imagine 7+)

 

[buzz sawyer]

When was the gravel dumped on the one side? Gravel is very poor mulch.
Anything else done around the base since it was planted? How about a shot from a few feet back?

 

[zogman]

The gravel or actually just stones as this was part of a stone garden and the most of The Garden had the stones removed this summer after the upper half of the tree went dead. The area has good drainage but yet is watered occasionally and has good nutrients in the soil.

 

[sand sock]

1 your tree is a catalpa tree , its not uncommon to get a dead branch , in its structure and it needing to be trimmed out. 2 whats weird is its usually not the leader coming out the top. . not saying it can't happen, but odd. 3 that sprout off the base is different. its not a root sucker, but maybe a injury in teh cambian layer.lettin the wild sprout emerge. 4 i would cut teh dead part off and hopefully a new leader would emerge and trim the sprout. you may want to grab some seed pods and start them in a bucket, just in case your tree, decides to chek out. 5 maybe roots are girdling or hitting some wall of concrete or maybe you had a lightening strike.