Amazingly I didn’t post anything on the blog yesterday!! The main reason being the Royal Wedding…. only kidding, I was having a bit of a Royal Bonsai Day at my house with friends coming during the day to play with trees and have a bit of Craic.
First up was this Root over Rock Juniper possibly ‘Repanda’ owned by Stephen. When Stephen bought the tree about 5 years ago it was very overgrown and he has worked hard to get the foliage chased back enough to allow for this styling to take place.
Stephen and I got to work getting the whole thing wired. Well, Stephen drank about 3 pots of my coffee in the process 🙂
Maggie kept an eye on us from a hidden location.
Fully wired but as yet to be styled.
After some basic placement it became evident that the left hand side branch wasn’t required in the design.
We even considered a more brutal pruning option. This is an option for the future but there were concerns over losing a corresponding root by removing the branch all in one go.
Here is the final outcome.
It’s well hardened off already and has extension growth on most branches. I decided to allow Matthew to defoliate it to begin with. Bit early, I hear you say! You might be right, but I find Tridents so strong and vigorous that two defoliations in the year isn’t a problem. I set him to work.
Blissfully unaware of my camera work, you can almost hear the concentration from here.
I talked about extending the foliage pads on the right, and keeping the left hand side tight to show off the rock and give the tree more interest. I then explained how, in a different pot, some negative space on the right would really help the overall image. I spotted an old Mica landscape pot under a bench and decided to show him what I meant. The pot was big enough to allow me to lift the planting out of the training pot and into the mica one without removing any root.
I told him that he needs to find a similar looking bit of rock or a big lump of moss to fill the gap between rock and root at the base.
After removing damaged roots and unwanted straight trunks etc, this is what I potted up in one of my new bowler hat training pots.
It is a very small leafed variety. I have left a stump or two for future carving. It was the easiest tree I’ve ever collected 😀
I decided to heat the jin with a blow torch and bend it into a more complimentary position. I protected the foliage with tin foil while I heated the jin. I used jin pliers to hold and twist the wood as I heated it. Once I got it to the right spot I held it for a minute or so for it to cool down and set in it’s new position.
As you can see, the heating treatment allows for decent bends to be added and has the benefit of ageing the wood with fire.
After a quick coat of Lime Sulphur I applied self Amalgamating Tape to the upper trunk area to protect it while I applied a bend or two. The upper trunk was bolt straight and I wanted to bring the foliage in tighter to the main body of the tree.
This is it after bending and some basic branch placement. It isn’t very refined as the foliage quite heavy and I wasn’t prepared to pinch it back any harder at this point. I reduced the jins at the base as they distracted from the rest of the tree. These will also be refined further at a later point as they are a bit clunky as they sit now. Further growth will be needed to fill out the image but the basic structure I wanted it there now.
This was it after some work. Some final tweaking of foliage required but we ran out of time.
The foliage needs to gain some more vigour and I plan to foliar feed during the year.
Some of the Yellow Gorse/Whinbush flowers. The air was heady with the scent of coconut from these stunning flowers. Pity they are too problematic for bonsai.
Some of the Blackthorn were still holding onto their flowers.
One of my favourite photos of the day, an old Beech ringed with a patch of Bluebells. New Beech seedling can also be seen reaching for the light before the parents shade them out.
Ferns starting to emerge.
After a nice walk I just had to take a seat 🙂
Bonsai Eejit 