On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 21:30:57 +0100, Martin Brown wrote:

On 10/08/2016 18:20, Ermin Trude wrote:
On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 17:42:14 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 10:47:53 -0500, Ermin Trude
wrote:

Has anyone any experience of pollarding cherry trees please?

Whatever you do, make sure you do it in the summer, to minimise the
possibility of infection by silver leaf or canker.

Pollarding always looks a bit too brutal and ugly for my taste.

I can undersatnd that - but it can be a good option on a lot of hardwoods.

I haven't ever done this but a neighbour had some professional tree
surgeons in to prune some very large flowering cherry trees - getting on
for 50 years old and 40+' high. Spectacular in flower but shading their
entire garden out. They recommended cutting back by about 1/3 to 1/2 and
the owner chose to have them cut back by 1/4 to 1/3.

The trees quickly bounched back - responding to pruning with rapid
growth.

That can be a problem with pruning in that each branch will throw out
lots of new growth. I have a couple of Acers in the garden that I do
prune every few years once the new growth has become usable on the stove.

My instinct is that it is already a bit late for such brutal pruning
this year because of the risk of silver leaf infection in the wounds.

Oh absolutely - I'm planning my next year's 'big jobs' for the garden.
I've a couple of other trees that I will be having felled by an arborist
as they are far too big for me to tackle so it may be that when he comes
this Autumn I may ask him for some 'free advice' on the cherries,
forearmed with the discussions here.