Yard signs
Turn every good tree into a billboard. Neighbors don't read slogans — they see a beautiful trunk and quietly wonder where theirs went.
I CUT THE CREPE
(and the crap)
A Parish Proud initiative
cutthecrepe.com
Lafayette, Louisiana
Cut the
Crepe — crepe myrtle pruning and care for Lafayette, Louisiana
Let's cut the crap about crepe myrtles.
That shapeless green lump in your yard is a tree. Five minutes a month gets it back.
That shapeless green lump in your front yard is a tree. It has smooth cinnamon-colored bark you have probably never seen. Five minutes a month gets it back.
Same species, same street
One of these was pruned.
The other was left alone.
Drag the line. Nothing was planted differently, fertilized differently, or watered differently. The difference is five minutes a month and one decision made in January.
Bark
Cinnamon, peeling, the whole reason
Airflow
Open enough to dry after rain
Winter
A silhouette worth the window seat
This is what you’re hiding.
And this is what you get back.
The mistake almost everyone makes
A crepe myrtle will turn itself into a shrub if you let it.
Every spring it sends up a crowd of thin shoots from its base and roots. Leave them one season and they’re a nuisance; leave them three and the trunks are gone and you own a large green meatball that happens to flower.
Left alone
OVERGROWN — the trunks are in there somewhere
Five taps, twenty seconds
Rate my tree.
No photo, no ladder, no expertise. Answer five questions about the tree in your yard and get a grade you can post.
The worse the tree, the better the card. That is the point — the grade is the invitation, not the judgment.
What the grade is measuringQuestion 1 of 5
Can you see the trunks from the street?
The entire maintenance program
Five minutes, once a month, April through September.
It’s not a pruning job. It’s a walk around the yard with your hands, six times a year.
- 01
Catch them green
A sucker under six inches is soft and not yet woody. Grab it low and snap it off sideways where it emerges.
- 02
Cut the woody ones flush
Hardened shoots need bypass hand pruners, cut flush at the point of origin. Leave a stub and you'll get three shoots next month.
- 03
Stop hitting the trunk
Trimmer nicks and mower bumps are what triggers most suckering in Lafayette. A two-to-three-foot mulch ring keeps machines away from the bark.
The felony
Crepe murder.
We have to talk about it.
Every February, crews across Lafayette saw crepe myrtles off at the same height until the trunks end in swollen fists. It is the most common thing done to this tree, and the worst.
Forty trees. One decision. Repeated every winter.
June, same tree. The cut couldn’t seal, so the tree threw a fistful of whips at it.
Let’s cut the crap
Four things people say about topping.
- “It makes it bloom more.”
- It blooms later, on shoots too thin to hold a flower head up in a July storm. Bloom count goes down, droop goes up.
- “It keeps it small.”
- The tree answers a hard cut with up to six feet of fast, weak growth. You are not controlling size; you are subscribing to a chore.
- “Everybody does it.”
- Everybody does it because everybody saw it done. It arrived as a habit, not horticulture — and habits are breakable.
- “The tree survives it.”
- Survival is a low bar. Flat cuts that big can't seal, so decay walks straight into the trunk and the knuckles get heavier every year.
And here’s the tie-in: topping is a sucker factory. Cut a crepe myrtle back hard and it answers from every point it can, top and bottom — the shapeless lumps around town are almost always trees that got topped and then abandoned.
Zone 9a, month by month
The Lafayette crepe myrtle year.
Today · August 16, 2026
Can I prune today?
No.
Structural pruning is out of season. Suckers, though, come off whenever you see them — all year long.
Short version for Zone 9a: structural cuts in January and February, sucker patrol April through September, planting in October, and hands off the rest of the year.
The full 12-month calendarThe wall of proof
Post your before and after.
Nobody was ever talked out of a bad prune by a pamphlet. They were talked out of it by the tree two doors down. Post the ugly photo next to the good one — first names only.
Every card in the gallery works like this. Drag it.
Take the pledge
“I’ll keep the suckers off, prune in late winter with hand tools, and let my crepe myrtles be trees. And when somebody comes down my street in February with a chainsaw and a ladder, I’ll say something.”
I cut the crepe
(and the crap)
CutTheCrepe.org
Free with a pledge, while they last. Put it under the tree you’re bringing back. That’s the whole campaign, one yard at a time.
Make it contagious
Four ways to spread it.
#CutTheCrepe photo contest
Four categories, judged seasonally: Best Bark in February, Best Bloom in July, Comeback of the Year, and Biggest Shrub — submitted with a laugh and no addresses.
The rescue map
A crowdsourced map of trees that need help, pinned by block, never by address. Not a shame list — it's how the coalition decides where to send help.
The honor roll
Most badly maintained trees were maintained by somebody who got paid to do it. A public directory of Crepe-Safe Certified crews gives homeowners somebody better to call.
Steal this post
Lafayette — that shapeless green lump in your yard is supposed to be a tree. Pull the shoots off the base five minutes a month, April to September, and the trunks come back. #CutTheCrepe
The directory
Friendly people who won’t top your tree.
Arborists, nurseries, crews, and neighbors who have said out loud that they prune crepe myrtles properly. Hire them, call them, join them.
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Presented with
Parish Proud
The Lafayette nonprofit working block by block on beautification, litter, and the tree canopy. Same parish, same trees, same idea.