Ornamental Cherry Tree Pruning Advice

[vikkib]

Hello all,

We have inherited an ornamental cherry tree in our garden which I believe is known as a flagpole cherry tree.

I'd like some advice on how/when to prune it. It's pretty tall and spreading out a fair bit and I'd just like to reduce it down in size to keep it manageable.

Any advice would be very gratefully received.

Thanks,

Vikki

[nickdub]

If its too big for you to be happy with it as it stands I'd advise taking it out altogether and planting something smaller instead eg an Amalanchier - the reason being it looks to me like a young tree with a lot of growth left in it before it reaches its mature size and heavy pruning of cherries usually results in them getting infected and dying anyway.

[ameno]

I'd have to agree. It will just keep getting bigger and bigger. That's a full-sized tree, not on any kind of restricting rootstock.
I have a cherry in my garden, one that grow from a seedling. It grows 3 feet outwards and 4 feet upwards every year, and needs heavy pruning yearly (all of the previous year's growth is shortened by 90% in early April) to keep it at a reasonable size.
Unless you are willing to put similar efforts in with yearly pruning, I would advise getting rid of it whilst it's still small enough that you can dig the stump out.

[vikkib]

Thank you both, we will work on removing it then. It's pretty close to the house and I'm not comfortable having something that big so close! Will look to replace with something on a more suitable rootstock.