Pompano Tree Pros puts Pompano Beach homeowners in touch with a local tree service company for fruit tree care in Pompano Beach and the coastal Broward towns around it.
The older neighborhoods of Pompano Beach, Oakland Park, and Wilton Manors hide a working orchard in their backyards: mangoes planted when the CBS houses were new, avocados shading half a lot, key limes, sapodillas, a banana clump against the fence. These trees earn their water twice — shade and groceries — but only if somebody prunes them like fruit trees instead of letting them become sixty-foot shade trees that fruit where only the squirrels can shop.
Mango is the flagship and the clearest case. Left alone it builds a huge crown that carries its crop at the top, drops limbs in storms, and turns August into a roof-cleaning chore. Pruned right — opened in the center for light, held to a pickable twelve-to-fifteen feet, cut soon after harvest so the tree flushes and sets buds on schedule — the same tree yields more usable fruit at a fraction of the risk. Timing is the craft: prune too late and you've cut off next summer's crop; South Florida mango work belongs in the weeks right after picking, not in spring.
Avocados want the same open structure with an extra dose of vigilance. Laurel wilt — a lethal fungal disease carried by the redbay ambrosia beetle — has been killing avocados and their laurel-family relatives across South Florida, and rapid wilting of a whole limb is its signature. Beetles colonize stressed and freshly killed wood, so sanitation pruning, quick removal of dead material, and not stockpiling avocado logs are all part of responsible care here.
Storm season reads a fruit canopy as cargo. A mango crown loaded with several hundred pounds of ripening fruit in August is a different wind problem than the same tree picked and thinned — one more reason the harvest-then-prune rhythm suits this coast so well. Quotes through this site can cover a single overgrown mango or the whole backyard grove, priced tree by tree in writing.
The South Florida backyard calendar
Fruit work here runs on species clocks. Mango: harvest June through September by variety, structural pruning immediately after, nothing heavy once cool-season bloom initiation nears. Avocado: similar post-harvest logic, plus year-round eyes for wilt symptoms. Citrus: minimal pruning by design — mostly deadwood, crossing limbs, and keeping the skirt off the ground — because every unnecessary citrus wound is an opening, and Florida citrus already fights greening disease on every front. Bananas and papayas are grasses and herbs pretending to be trees; they want dead material removed and spent stalks cut, not "pruning" in any woody sense. UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions keeps variety-level calendars for all of it.
The common thread is restraint with purpose: each species gets cut at the moment its biology can afford it, which is why one annual "trim everything day" serves a fruit yard so poorly.
Rescuing the inherited giant
The most common request is the forty-foot mango that came with the house: decades unpruned, fruiting at the top, shading three yards. Restoration is a staged project — the arboricultural ceiling of roughly a quarter of the canopy per year means the tree comes down to working height over two or three seasons, each stage cutting to strong laterals so regrowth builds a lower, permanent frame rather than a thicket of water sprouts. Aggressive one-day "dehorning" jobs produce exactly that thicket, plus sunscalded bark and a storm-brittle crown; the ISA's pruning fundamentals explain why the patient version wins.
Expect an honest triage too — some inherited giants are keepers, and some are hollow, wilt-struck, or leaning over the neighbor's addition, where the right call crosses into removal and replanting a grafted variety that fruits at human height. The selection guidance makes the second tree smarter than the first.
More from Trim & Palm Care: Palm Trimming · Tree Trimming & Pruning · Hurricane Preparation Trimming · Tree Health & Deep-Root Fertilization · Tree Cabling & Bracing · Arborist Consultation & Risk Assessment
Sources & further reading
Worth knowing before the saw starts
When should my mango tree be pruned?
Right after harvest — for most Pompano varieties that means summer into early fall. That window lets the tree regrow and still set flower buds for the next crop. Heavy pruning in winter or spring sacrifices the coming season's fruit, which is the most common backyard mistake.
Why does my big mango fruit only at the very top?
Fruit follows light, and a closed canopy only has light at its crown. Opening the center and shortening leaders brings production back down within ladder reach over a couple of seasons — the difference between watching fruit drop and picking it.
My avocado limb wilted brown in a week. What is that?
Treat that as a laurel wilt suspect and get it assessed quickly — the disease kills fast and spreads through beetles breeding in dead wood. Confirmed cases mean prompt removal and careful wood handling. Speed protects the avocados left in your neighborhood.
Can an old citrus tree be brought back?
Sometimes. If decline is cultural — buried root flare, thirsty sand, deadwood — cleanup and care can revive it. If it's citrus greening, management is about extending useful life, not curing. An honest assessment beats replanting reflexively, and beats nursing a doomed tree too.
Do fruit trees count under tree-removal rules?
Cities in Broward generally treat fruit trees more permissively than canopy hardwoods, but size thresholds can still apply. When a removal is on the table, the quoting company checks the current local rules as part of the written scope — worth confirming rather than assuming either way.