…I hope.

Continuing my manoeuvring to keep my son on the bonsai bandwagon, I spent an hour or so this afternoon working on a tree.  When my friend Stephen donated a few of his to the cause, I asked Matthew which ones he liked. He was drawn to this Root over Rock Trident. ( Not really a root over rock, more like a growing against a rock Trident.)

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.

After defoliation we wired a few branches into place for practice and discussed the shape that the tree will take in future.

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.

I didn’t set out to do all this today, I think we got carried away!! I am confident that this tree will bounce back in a few weeks. I’ll even post an update here to prove it 🙂