On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 15:21:52 +0000, David wrote:

On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 16:57:50 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

On 10/08/2016 16:47, Ermin Trude wrote:
Has anyone any experience of pollarding cherry trees please?



One across the road from us was given some chain saw pruning, it
flowered a bit the following year was better the next and back to
normal by the third year

Just checking - if you coppice a tree you basically cut it down almost
to ground level removing all the branches and expecting new shoots to
grow from the stump.

Is pollarding the same but around head height? That is, if the tree is
tall you take of all the branches and just leave a bare 6-8 foot stump?

Yes, that is correct. I don't wish to have the new growth from low down
but to come out at a height where I can still get under it easily with
the mower.

If so I assume that only some types of tree will survive this brutality.

Hence the question ;-)


Alternatively, do you just cut the centre back hard to the lowest few
branches and also cut those back hard?


It has been crown lifted in the past so there is really nothing in the
centre that could be usefully retained. I'm minded to try pollarding one
(the least conspicuous) and seeing how it recovers and then use gentler
methods on the others if the initial result is poor. If it *is* poor and
the tree dies then at least I have some firewood :-/