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Zube,

Being a big larch fan and just thinking aloud - I'd find this very good “bit of kit” kind of a tricky one. ( Mind you, I find all trees tricky:-)

What are the design options?

At this height many would say that you being forced toward a literati style if you follow conventional notions about width to height ratio. A few more bends and twists put in it– stick in a little round pot and Wey Hey! another bunjin just like many others.

Second thought - removing the top lot of branches puts you in more conventional territory. (although at IBC - sumo larch seem to be de rigeur. :-)

Third thought - splitting in half (by layering) above the 1st set of branches up could give you 2 decent trees that would both be moving into the “larch as pine” category and now that I mention it:- do you style it as a natural larch or a pine?

To that end, I think if you straighten it up by about 15 deg, the apex comes over the base very nicely. Refining the top section – which is slightly getting away from the rest of the tree – will give a very good natural initial image IMO.

I would be looking to cut the main branches back on this to get them to divide, taper and ramify with a view to keeping the overall image quite sparse and close in to the trunk to show it off.

I have found blank spaces very hard to fill on larch once the main branches have set so am doing my utmost to keep as many branches as possible on young stock and cutting them back hard in late winter (to one bud even) to keep them in proportion and ramify. Even this hard pruning doesn't seem to stimulate buds from anywhere other than existing branch crotches.

Branch-wise, I’d say wysiwyg and would be interested on how you see this one developing.

Excuse the rambling.

TimR