[header] How to care for trees on your property [title] Remove branches that are diseased, dead, conflicting, or broken. [title] Prune to increase the amount of light penetration into the crown of a tree or prune to improve structure or shape of the tree. [title] Cut just outside the branch collar on the tree. 
[substeps] Always cut back to a lateral branch. When pruning a branch back to a lateral, the lateral branch should be no smaller than 1/3 the size of the branch being cut.