Help! How do I prune young Robinia?

Hi all,

I have a young Robinia Casque Rouge that went in in early spring just gone. I have been encouraged by the place I bought it from to prune it now before the winter in order to get thicker, more bushy growth next year.

But I'm at a loss what to prune. It was delivered to me with the lowest branches cut like this and I'm tempted to trim them back to the trunk. There are two branches growing out of an older cut branch to form a V. Should one of these be removed? There were in fact 3 branches here but I already removed one. I don't like how the trunk above the V has a big gap before the highest set of branches and wondering how I can encourage growth here.

All advice welcome as I'm totally new to tree pruning and my husband isn't happy about getting someone in to do this!

3 images attached.

Many thanks!

 

Blimey that is leggy, I know what I would do with it but it would be a bit brutal.
Interested to hear what others think.
Its bound to be grafted, can you see the point where the graft is?
Just wonder if its been top grafted.

 

It seems to have a change of thickness just above the point where it's tied in with that framework. Also, where all the branches seem to come off, there's another "step". So I'd be wary of doing anything

 

Those branches at the bottom won’t look so bad when the others lose their leaves. As it’s newly planted I’d leave it to see how it develops next year and consider any pruning next autumn.

 

Didn't heighbours object against that tall tree right on the border? It's too close to the fence, it better to sit in the middle of your garden.
It looks very leggy, unless it's supposed to be that tall. So far nothing to prune there.

 

Hi

Intresting staking ,

 

It looks to me like its been grown in a nursery where the trees are too closely spaced and its grown too tall and leggy, it need some branching lower down in my opinion, but how you achieve that now is the problem.

If it just forms a head at that height without thickening the stem it likely to break in a gale.

I dont think the tree has been grown well before you bought it, height is nothing without a decent stem.

 

Could pollarding be an option perhaps?

 

If it was mine I'd go for it and create a new head lower down the stem, but just wondering where the graft is.

 

As I said, a closer look at those two places would help in case it's top grafted like @pete suggests.
@GardenJoy can you take closeups please of the stem in the 2 places I said earlier? Ie, just about the support frame, and higher where there seems to be a step in the growth.

 

The only times I've seen this cultivar for sale, it's always been a grafted standard.

 

@Thevictorian top grafted or just root stock? I've got a small ornamental crab (from B &M) which has both a basal and a top graft! It seems they wanted a certain level of vigour with a very limited height!

 

The ones I've seen @CarolineL have been top grafted. I can't remember seeing an interstem.

 

Thank you all for your comments. I have no idea if it's grafted, I wouldn't know what to look for!

This is a dwarf variety, so it wasnt an issue planting it near the property boundary and I intend to have it professionally pruned when older to maintain height and shape, it's just we didn't anticipate having to factor in the cost of pruning when it was this young.

I have attached some additional photos to show the trunk and specifically the point where it looks like a competing trunk branch was cut off at some point resulting in 3 to sprout from that point (1 of the 3 has been removed).

Should I remove the 2 lowest stubby branches which were cut off by the nursery but not cut to the trunk? - they left them about 4 inches long which looks odd to me. And do I need to be trimming back the length of the upper branches to encourage growth further down their length?

Many thanks for all your insights!

 

In the last picture, it looks like someone did it wrong and cut into the stem.

Like @Alisa said, a tree should be planted in the middle of a garden and not by the fence.