A few pictures of trees trained as "pollard"

A pollard willow. Next to a drain where water leaves my property. One last chance to grab nutrients before they leave. Slightly to the left of the willow and in the background is a pollard Black Locust.

There is nothing exceptional about this clone. I saw it growing beside Peppermint Creek at McNamara's Landing (a local park). It is a Crack Willow (Salix fragilis). The lady at the local wildlife rehab place likes the fresh limbs when she has a beaver in residence.

As you can see, the tree produces a super-abundance of poles.  Poles = pollard

Three pollard Black Locust in this image. All three originally cut at 6'. If I were attempting to maximize biomass production I would plant on 10'-by-25' centers.

One of the advantages pollard (which has a trunk) has over coppice (cut near ground level) is that the newly emerging shoots are above the convenient browsing height of deer and cattle.

My first effort at pollard. Cut at 12'.

Another example cut at 12'.

This Black Locust was cut at 4'. It struggled to regrow due to shade from nearby Northern Red Oak. Please notice that the limbs come out of the trunk BELOW the topping cut so cutting those limbs near the trunk entails bending over.

I decided to take my advice and get rid of a legacy project. These are some of the first grapes I planted back in the 1990s. One row has already been removed in this picture.

And now the second row is gone. That freed up a 20'-by-30' patch. I have a row of elderberries and a row of aronia penciled in for replacements. The cardboard on the right is mulch for a row of rootstock that I am trying to turn into a stool-bed.

Bonus picture

Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) breaks dormancy and blooms very, very early in the spring. Not a rare species but a bit of an oddity.