What do you want to do with it? Removing the leader will greatly affect its appearance and appeal. You can remove branches or shorten them.

Ouch, good luck with that!

What do you want to cut off? The tree is planted rather near the road and will get a lot wider than that so not sure what you are planning to do with it.

Thanks all for response, I would like to keep it but at least take the top out and possibly trim back some of the side branches. If I shorten the branches back by half will it kill those branches.The tree was a 65th b/day gift from my close friends so to chop it down is out of the question.

Your tree is almost exactly like mine, and I've cut off the 2 bottom lots of branches as we had difficulty walking past it on the path and it's still to wide.
But Botanic says they can be shortened without ruining it so that's my next job. Good job I have some long, strong gloves.

Depend what you mean by ruining it. The eventual height of this tree can be 30 metres with a width of 15 metres (probably not in this country though!)and cutting the top off will just make it branch out so the wide part is lower down than it would be otherwise. I would have thought the best thing would be to trim the lower branches off to the trunk and wait for it to get tall enough for the width to matter less.

Its always best to check the size of a mature tree before planting a sapling!

Hi, I wouldn't cut the growing point out, as Steragram says, it will just spread itself wider, without getting any taller, that is if it doesn't kill it, it is planted too near the road, and although they naturally lose lower branches when older, it will be quite a few years before that happens, by which time the lowerbranches will be at least half way across the road unless you cut them off, and it will be needed quite regularly, as each layer of branches spread, also I think the little triangle you have it planted in will have to be made much larger to accomodate the ever increasing trunk size, Derek.

The only solution I can think of if you really intend to keep it is to find a tree expert to move it back for you. It can't be kept small.

Thankyou all for your advise. I have chopped off the lower branches and taken 6inches off the top leading branch, fingers crossed now as to whether it likes being trimmed!!!!
Thanks again.

The question is whether you will like what it does next.