Renald:

Even with the best of instructional websites, I doubt there is any way to prune a tree to make it grow downward. Tying the branches down might work. But if your tree is still very young, I wouldn't worry about it too much. The branches can't grow horizontally forever.

Some of the weeping cherries around here become quite large, with considerable upward growth, but the twigs still droop when the trees grow up. Perhaps you were expecting a little more weeping from your tree a little too soon. I would leave it alone, since it is a decorative specimen and you don't have to worry about fruiting. There may come a time when you will want to prune it, but that is probably well in the future.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

If the rootstock is sending its own vertical branches up through the weeping part you should cut those out.

Renald, someone on the Trees forum may know more -- this is not an orchard tree since the fruit is inedible. I have a big weeping cherry myself and over the years the main limbs have grown more outward so now the tree takes up a lot more area than it used to. I brought out an expert to take a look, with the hope of him telling me how to make it smaller, but he just suggested we leave the tree as-is and move the path that it now covers. What I think can be done is to prune back those sideward branches, do one of them every year so over several years you get them all back. On my tree the sideward branches themselves are 5" thick, so I don't know if I can do that.

Scott

The 'expert' had it right, hacking away big chunks of a weeping cherry isn't likely to be good for the tree.

The habit varies a bit within the particular variety as well as from one kind of weeping cherry to the next. Some will throw up taller branches in time and pull themselves up into a more elevated and dramatic shape, others remain mushrooms indefinitely. Some get big and others not so big.

For most probably best practice is to assume tree came from nursery in a finished condition (unless very small) and leave it alone. If some branches eventually start growing across the ground like snakes and producing a somewhat bizarre effect snipping these back can certainly be seen as an improvement. Otherwise the point of the tree is the long hanging branches so these should be left to produce the intended effect. The common practice of cutting weeping cherries back to look like cocktail umbrellas or Moe Stooge's hair shows that much of the time a completely different, non-weeping tree should have been planted instead.

Just a short note to thank you all for your advice. The consensus of your responses is to leave it alone, or at most prune judiciously over the years so as not to damage the tree.

BTW, as a newcomer, I am most impressed with this Forum, and how quickly and positively it responded to my request for advice!

Renald