Making a Bonsai from Garden Centre Stock

Xavier Martinez — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 16:49:40 +0000

Last year my daughter bought me a conifer from the local garden centre for Father’s Day. I took it with great joy and then left it in the corner of the nursery until I felt the time was right to fiddle with it. The last time I attempted to make a bonsai from this sort of material I made a horrendous error but more on that later. I have no idea what the genus for this conifer is but it looks healthy and ready for pruning

Before going into this project I will show you a few pictures of one of my Satsuki Azalea in full bloom. It does look fantastic but requires a repot before the winter as the soil has completely broken down. I have removed flowers regularly to try and conserve energy and I have also done some light wiring to try and turn the flowers to the front. I will probably do the repot in a couple of weeks once the bloom has fallen.

Making my garden centre bonsai

This tree cost about ten pounds and has no obvious ‘bonsai-like’ features to work with. This is why it has sat about in the nursery for a year. Now is not the time to consider repotting!!

First job is to clean away as much juvenile growth as you can so it is easier to identify branches you wish to use in your design. Having an idea how tall you wish the tree to be also helps because you might as well reduce the height at a location where you have suitable upwards pointing growth.

I noticed that this material had a low thinner upward pointing branch that could be used as a potential second trunk.

I then removed all of the crotch growth and anything growing close to the trunk line of any branches I chose to keep. My approach was to pick alternatively growing branches that reduced in thickness the higher up the trunk I went.

Don’t worry too much about your choices – just make sure you remove any opposing branches in your design.

I have used a wooden block to open up the secondary trunk to facilitate easier branch pruning and selection. I will remove the block at the end when I am ready to apply some heavy-guage aluminum wire.

As I work up the tree my selections are based on achieving optimum numbers of branches from front, back and sides. I have also trimmed off growing tips to encourage some new growth where I want it.

I am now looking at making decisions for the apical region.

As I have worked my way up the trunk the length of each succesive branch has been reduced to produce something akin to what you may see in the mountain regions where they typically grow.

The apical region has been thinned out but no firm decisions on which shoots will be kept as part of the apex. The overall design has sufficient structure to give a pleasing look and I am hopeful that with heavy fertilisation it will flourish.

The second trunk has been wired and some movement applied. I have put a reminder on my phone for 9 months time for removal.

The big thing to watch out for is removing too much growth. This is the error I made in 2015 and the tree eventually died. I will now feed this and leave it in a shady part of the nursery to recover for a few weeks.

I will then give it more sun and let it grow unchecked for at least one year. The branches you have kept now need a chance to establish themselves and start putting on new growth.

Despite all of the rain I have been slowly working my way around some of the yamadori Hornbeam and Beech that I dug up in 2018/19. All are looking in good health athough the greenfly have definitely been active. I have been spraying everything that is ‘green’ and decidious with a general purpose bug solution.

I also removed the wire from all of the younger potensai I worked on in March. The timing was pretty good and only a few of the branches showed any scars. I am fairly confident that these will grow out through the autumn.

Today I also pruned back my Trident Maples with the specific aim of finding some decent cuttings. We are fast approaching the height of summer so be aware many of our trees will be heading into a dormant period. I do not feed anything at this time – next opportunity will be as we head into Autumn.

So I encourage you to scour your local garden centres for something to ‘play’ with over the next few weeks. My next blog will be all about taking cuttings and dealing with death…of our much loved bonsai

Keep on spraying…

Conifer – Expressions of Grace Bonsai

Making a Bonsai from Garden Centre Stock

Making my garden centre bonsai