ALL trees releader.. by themselves ... and yours has ....

it appears.. in the 3rd pic.. that there is a leader above the rest ... if so.. whats the problem?? .. and more importantly.. why do you think you need to do anything about it???

you bought a very open and sparse type tree ... and you want it fuller ... what will you do.. when its 20 feet tall.. in a few years??? ...

sooner or later.. you wont be able to prune it at height ...but by that time.. if you have pruned it.. you might end up with one funky looking tree ... like my dad did.. when i was a kid ...

he got rid of it.. when i could stand one top of an 8 foot ladder anymore .. lol ... now that i think about it.. i had to get rid of it... not to mention is was 6 feet from the house ...

ken

I would reduce those whorls by a shoot or two. But Ken is right - one of the first things to remember is 'prune with intent'. What is your intent, and what is your plan? My garden is full of pines that were candle-pruned and fertilized in the pot, with very short internodes and full structure. Then they go in the ground, find freedom, and don't get candle-pruned, and the internal distance triples and the density goes way down. So the tree looks like two trees, one on top of the other. In those cases I generally thin out the bottom of the tree (especially with the white pines with their crowded whorls) and tip prune the top to bring it back in a little. But you can't be too heavy-handed unless you want to do it forever and no ladder is tall enough for that! (Although you can keep re-leadering it, but that is a major pita and I try to avoid that.)

you could also search for another cultivar that is naturally dense

ron

Thank you all for the input. I decided to just leave it alone.

I had hired a landscaper to do some work, and he suggested I candle prune it so it would "fill out". Not knowing any better, that's what I did.

I put it in the ground knowing full well what it will look like in decades... that's what I wanted! So leaving it be now...