Hi Gyppy. Why are you wanting to prune? Young trees don't generally need pruning.

Agree. Its only going to be a small tree and shouldn't need pruning. It will have been correctly pruned to grow into the proper shape and pruning could well spoil it.

The only pruning should be to remove dead, diseased or crossing shoots that rub against each other, and now is the time to do that. Otherwise, it shouldn't really be pruned to reduce size.

Young trees are pruned to establish grow pattern and general shape. Removing twiggy & criss cross branches is far less traumatic on the tree now then doing it later. The general rule for pruning is no more then 1/3 of the branches.

I forgot to say - the reason you should cut out any damaged wood now is because, as its a Cherry, these are prone to silverleaf and bacterial canker infection, and pruning in summer reduces the risk of both these diseases.

Young trees purchased from a reasonable grower should already have been properly pruned, hence my reply.

Perhaps the OP could come back and explain why s/he feels it needs to be pruned.

Why isn't the question and it really doesn't matter.

Know what you mean Rosierose - I'm also curious as to why they want to prune it back.Maybe they can't plant it yet and it keeps blowing over in the wind? Or its a present for someone and it won't fit in the car? All kinds of interesting possibilities;-))

Why could affect the answer though? eg if the questioner just wants it to be smaller?

or they could just want to prune it.