I hadn’t planned to buy another tree this weekend but there were three that caught my eye. I waited until the rest of the guys had had their pick and two of them had gone. The one I preferred however, was still there!!

I have never owned a Juniperus Rigida, Temple Juniper before and fancied this one. I have had numerous other varieties of juniper over the years and to be honest, I sold most of them.

This one presented a new challenge for me. I have to get to know the variety and it’s habits. Peter was very clear about a few issues with the variety and I took these on board. What attracted me to this one? Well, the deadwood is beautiful and mostly natural. It was once a much bigger tree but now the majority of the trees foliage comes from one live vein. There is a smaller vein running up the back of the tree but this looks weak. I’ll wait and see how it progresses.

What amazed me most about this tree was just how hard the deadwood is. Even at the base, what looks soft and rotted is actually hard. Peter says that’s one of the reasons that this variety is used by the Japanese. They tend to avoid the soft wood trees, always thinking to the future of the tree.

All I’m going to do with this one is clean up the deadwood and define just where the live vein is at the back of the tree. I may give it a little lime sulphur but really want to keep the natural colour of the wood. I’ll feed it strongly and pop it into my poly tunnel. Conditions in there should be perfect. No styling work is planned until I get to know the tree.