I'm looking for some advice. My Mother in law hired a guy to come to prune our ornamental cherry tree in our backyard a few days ago. I've read that you never want to prune too much off in any one year. I'm sure the pictures show the story here. It looks like it was butchered. My question is will the tree survive this. Given the very little I know, I highly doubt it but looking for a better opinion. I live on Vancouver island in case that might be helpful. The tree is about 20-25 years old and was here when we moved into the house about 20 years ago.
I can't answer the poll, as I'm not sure there is a clear-cut answer. That looked like a shapely, healthy tree, planted where there is plenty of space for it to grow naturally to whatever shape it wants. Just cutting it back so much would not in itself kill it. But the best time to prune ornamental cherries is never, because they are so susceptible to disease, and particularly so when the weather is wet. So it would probably live, unless it gets diseased, which is probably likely. But it's not going to be the beautiful tree it was. It will likely grow lots of suckers or water sprouts, giving it a very unnatural shape. Was there a reason why you wanted the tree pruned at all? If it was giving that area too much shade, you may as well just remove it, maybe replace it with a tree that doesn't mind being pruned, not a cherry.
Honestly, I didn't want to prune it at all. It's my mother-in-law's property and felt the size was getting too big. It was gorgeous when it was in full bloom! But sadly I'm just the son-in-law that doesn't apparently know anything. Sadly this was done by a professional gardening/landscape company too. I would have thought that a good landscape/gardening company would have highly recommended against pruning at all.
Yep. Maybe they're hungry, need the work. If it's really supposed to be a good company, I would make sure they're made aware of the work this person did.
