Hard prune weeping cherry?

[redkiteblueskyu2]

My clients said they felt the tree was now too big for the space it's in and requested a hard prune - (taking out the branches highlighted in pink). I asked a couple arborists their opinion. One offered to give me a hand. The other said don't touch it with a saw -- maybe inject a growth reducer in the soil. I don't have much experience with a weeping cherry. If we hard prune, is it going to come back something like the drawing, or is it better to just leave it be?

 

[Stumpsprouts]

Lol. Wow. Yeah that would probably kill that weeping cherry. They don’t bounce back super great from aggressive pruning. You’re generally looking at a max of 30% removal of the canopy of a small to medium tree and more like 10-15% for a large tree. What percentage of canopy would you say you’re taking out there?

It’s not the right tree for the site. Way too close to the house. You could remove the parts above the pink and come back next year and take a wee bit more and see how it responds, or just whack it and plant a large shrub or much smaller tree.

 

[Reach]

I’ll second what @Stumpsprouts said. It looks to me like you’re trying to turn it into a Snow Fountain cherry. That’s not going to work. If it does survive pruning like that, it will branch out into a big tangled shrub on top of a stick.

My recommendation would be to remove it and install a Snow Fountain instead, if they want a Cherry there.

 

[redkiteblueskyu2]

Yeah, @Stumpsprouts, that'd be about 90%, Duh. [facepalm]

 

[redkiteblueskyu2]

@Reach the snow fountain is a great idea.