Are you using a phone app for the editing or an editing program on your PC? Most come with a cloning tool, that lets you copy a part of the image and move it anywhere you want to sort of paint over the part you want removed. So after cropping, you can still show leaves instead of just a black space. Usually there are more areas in a photo, or even from other photos taken in the same area, that can be used to be able to pull the cloned parts from. Here there were limited leaves I could use here so it can sometimes give that repetitious look, but enough to give you an idea of how the cloning tool works.
Another trick if you still want to hide something a bit further is to darken just that part that might not look perfect like I did here. There are several ways to do this, all just as easy.
But usually cloning gives excellent results. I mostly use a very old program PaintShop Pro v9 (the newer versions lag when switching between tasks that annoys me). But even the free Gimp editing program is excellent and includes a cloning tool.
