Al, this is a piece of your recent advice to one of our members about a ficus growing indoors:

"Long term goals are simple: increase the number of branches, which will also increase the volume of foliage. By pruning properly, you can keep foliage close to the main trunk and promote 'bushy' instead of 'leggy'. Also, you want to ensure there are no co-dominant leaders. When you look at your tree your eye shouldn't have to decide which vertical branch is the actual leader.

Now is not the point in the plant's growth cycle to do any hard pruning. Your plant isn't dying, but it's not bursting with energy, either; so I would wait until days are longer and light better to start the pruning that will actually reshape/transform the tree. For now, I would remove the growing tip of each branch that has 4 or more leaves on it, including the apex. This will stop all branch elongation in its tracks (except those you didn't tip-prune) and literally force the tree to back-bud and make more branches. You may not see much in the way of results from this operation until after the spring equinox, but tip pruning now will give you a head start.

Next summer, when the tree has gained some energy reserves, you can start cutting back the vertical growth to buds that are facing in the direction of desired (horizontal) growth. You'll be cutting branches with 4 or more leaves back to 2 leaves. This may sound severe, but this will produce at least 2 new branches from axils (crotches) of living leaves - branches close to the trunk .... and possibly more branches from adventitious buds that may be activated by the hard pruning. This is your real start at rejuvenating the tree. When those branches grow to 4 leaves, you cut them back to 2 leaves. So from 1 branch you get 2. From cutting back 2 branches you get 4, then 8, then 16 ..... Soon, you have many branches to select from, and you simply eliminate those that don't fit with your vision of what the tree should look like."

I read this with extreme interest and wonder if your methodology will work on outside container trees as well (ex, Japanese Maples).