Next thing was to pluck old needles. The name "densiflora" means "dense foliage". And this tree sure had dense foliage. It was left alone for a few years and now we had a problem which we want to have: there was just too much foliage on it. Quite a few small branches had to go. Besides we cut off all the little dead ones and the left over stumps in between. This is a good time to look at the tree again from all sides and carefully think abut future design.