In article ,
Janet Tweedy writes:
|
| Except that, Sacha, this tree looks as if it has been pruned in the
| past. I would have gone for pruning the long obviously weaker growths
| back to two buds from the main stem. However I'm no expert, it's just
| what my gut instinct would tell me to do.

Yes. Let's analyse this mathematically :-)

1) Not doing anything almost certainly means that it remains a dead
loss, eyesore and waste of space.

2) Grubbing it involves the total loss of the tree.

3) Tidying it up and pruning it (by a rank amateur) may make it
worse, but may make it better.

(3) is the only one that MIGHT salvage anything, so is necessarily
better (in a game theoretic sense) than either of the other approaches.
In plain English, what's to lose? If it doesn't improve, then the
best solution is (2).

And there has been plenty of good advice on how to do (3) in this
thread.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.