I have been specialising in shohin sized trees for about 3 years now. In that time, I have put together a collection of about 50 shohin sized trees. Despite having that number to choose from, finding 5 that work together and are sufficiently well developed and presented to be considered show worthy, is proving to be quite a challenge.

This is the best that I can come up with at the moment

When I think about trees that work together in a display, I am thinking about the relative proportions of each tree in the group. I want trees that are all approximately the same size. If you have 1 or 2 trees that are a little larger than the others in the group, the eye is immediately drawn to that.

Take a look at this next picture, which was taken in February of this year.

The cork barked elm…

This sweet little pine has been in the Puget Sound (Northwestern USA) area since 1989. It was collected by John Muth. Some of you might remember it from the 1992 cover of Bonsai Clubs International. I remember seeing it in a bonsai exhibition years ago in Seattle, sitting off in a corner, looking quite distinguished. Recently this tree passed to a client of mine, and we reworked it.

In 1992 fewer possibilities for the styling of this tree existed. Just a few unramified branches were present, as is often the case with newly collected Ponderosa. Now we have more complex branching options. It’s a good example of a Ponderosa that over time has done pretty tidy job of growing out branches and ramifying.

Early image of this Ponderosa pine, 22 years ago, on the cover of Bonsai Clubs International.

Before we started work on the tree.

Like the thinking in the…