Styling – Expressions of Grace Bonsai

Dawn Redwood Bonsai

Xavier Martinez — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 17:34:39 +0000

Find out my KEY dates and Bonsai Care Tips for Dawn Redwood. A short and simple guide that is ideal for beginners. Pruning dates, Wiring, Potting, Disease, Fertilising and a bit of history too…

God Bless & Happy Bonsaiing
Xavier

Hinoki Cypress Bargain Basement Project

Xavier Martinez — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 09:58:39 +0000

So, as the end of summer rapidly approaches, I find my thoughts wandering eagerly to a time of rest. The past 5 months have been hectic and despite the enjoyment, I am definitely ready to take a break. However, we are not quite at that time yet…

Now is often a great time to start scouring the nurseries for unwanted ‘summer-damaged’ stock. Normally I will find dwarf azalea or potentilla but this week I was lucky enough to discover a Hinoki Cypress. Although I have never worked on this genus before, the price reduction to just £5.99 was too good to resist

The rules for purchasing ‘bargain-basement’ nursery stock remain the same:

Check beneath the soil for signs of inverse taper on the base of the trunk
Is there a good number of usable branches (not just 2 dimensions)
Is it relatively healthy (I am sure there will be some obvious dieback)
Is there a unique feature to seperate it from ‘the rest’?
Is it cheap enough that it dying will not be a big drama

You must get you fingers dirty before you make that final decision! I have pulled this out of the plastic container and immediately noticed healthy white roots. It is also not root bound so I could get away with leaving it ‘as is’ during styling.

It has a unique twin trunk feature which means it is very likely to have a strong base for the future nebari to develop. I had a little dig under the surface and could see that inverse taper would not be a problem.

Definitely worth paying the price

When I got it home I drenched it and then left it in a shady part of the garden until I had a chance to do some research. I always take the time to learn about my tree before I jump in with the chainsaw! I was satisfied that basic structural work could be done safely and because the root ball was nice and healthy I chose to do a very simple ‘slip pot’ into a bigger container to protect it through the winter.

I ‘m still not entirely certain which will be the front for this design. I have decided to wait until next year and just let the tree recover and push out new growth in 2022. I may yet remove some more lower branches and apply wire sometime next year. The main priority for me is allowing the tree time to develop a strong root base. Patience…patience…patience

And of course…now is a good time for taking cuttings. I obtained 8 usable shoots making sure to make clean cuts just below the point where the colour has changed from green to brownish. They are potted up in vermiculite and peat based mix and have plastic humidity ‘domes’. I will check them in about 6 weeks and hopefully see fresh growth. They will stay in the greenhouse through the winter.

And now for some bonsai 'home truths'.

Every year, no matter how careful I am, some bonsai just die. Sometimes it is due to mistakes I have made and sometimes it is just down to the environment. Whatever the cause – it happens and you must be prepared for this. When you take a tree out of its natural environment and make it grow in a small pot things will sometimes go wrong. The best we can do is to try and observe and understand how our bonsai grows and responds to different environmental factors.

Learn about the tree before you start to do any type of work on it. Remember, the tree is already unhappy that you are not letting it grow in the open so anytime you do anything else it will have some form of adverse affect. Hence, most of the pruning and shaping work is done in the spring when the tree is full of stored energy.

This year I had to say farewell to: a mature Japanese Maple, two ten-year-old Satsuki Azalea and several younger assorted varieties. I also had a near-miss with my prized Japanese White Pine and several Chinese Elms.

I think the Azalea died as a result of poor soil which allowed the roots to dry out during the hot sun. I have no idea why the large maple died – shame, it had a great nebari

So, the advice is to never totally give up on your tree. I always wait at least one year before consigning anything to the bonsai funeral pyre. At this moment two more of my ‘deaduns’ are sending out baby shoots from their root base. Granted, the tree will not be the same as before but at least it will have a chance to start again.

Now is also the time for the 3rd round of pruning on your Japanese Larch. Check those new shoots for tight buds close together and prune back to this point. If the internodal distance between buds is still large then cut back to the first whorl where you should hopefully activate two opposing buds. If you are unsure or your tree is still in development then leave things until next spring.

You should also be seeing a lot of leaves yellowing on your Satsuki Azalea. Don’t worry – it is perfectly normal. All I do is gently pluck them off the branch.

This is also the time to do light pruning on your Chinese Elm. All I do is cut back to the design silhouette and remove those pesky mealy bugs feeding off the trunk and branches!!!!

Happy bonsaiing

My Chinese Juniper Project

Xavier Martinez — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 19:34:33 +0000

Two or three times a year I pay a visit to my favourite stock supplier – Savin Nurseries. It is a massive garden centre hidden in the rural(ish) village of Lower Stondon and can cater for any of your vegetative delights. It is also well known amongst bonsai suppliers for a broad range of premium and budget trees. So this May I visited to find some low-cost starter trees such as Fuji Cherry, Yew or any other deciduous bargains hidden in the corners…

Little did I expect to settle on a four-foot monster Juniperous Davuricus – better known as Chinese Juniper. Most of you know already just how much I hate working with Junipers but I am still a sucker for challenges if they are at the right price. Twenty pounds later and a squashed ride back in my Kangoo found me wondering what on earth I was going to do with it???

It was too late to do an initial repot and as I had no idea how to style it with all of the multiple trunks I put it in the corner of the garden and ignored it. I have found over the years that it is always best to ‘leave a tree alone’ when you really have no idea what to do with it. Then out of the blue, just a few days ago, I started ‘fiddling’ with the trunks and clearing out the lower debris

Junipers are extremely popular for bonsai styling and are generally very forgiving. They are best worked on in the spring or mid to late summer and the main rule is to never remove all of the foliage from a branch – if you want it to live.

Once I had cleared away all of the moss and dead twigs I could start to get an idea of which trunks I wanted to keep. At this stage I recognised that their was no obvious primary trunk or front so I started to look for anything that had promising secondary branch structure or would be easier to bend once wired.

I hate Juniper for two reasons. The first is that the juvenile growth is prickly and the second is that they generally require a lot of wire work. As my wiring skills have improved my desire to overcome this genus has grown stronger. Just be aware that you need different guages of wire and that the bark can be delicate.

Over the next two days I started to apply different guages of wire. I tended to work on a trunk by trunk basis and then ‘hopped between’ interesting branches as I felt the artistic creativity direct. With this sized project it is important to be prudent with how much of the foliage you decide to prune – it is far too easy to remove a branch that you later realise is pivotal to the final design.

This is an example of one of many of the branches that had to be wired and bends applied. There are two gauges of wire used in this example and it is crucial to be very careful with your application. The bark can come away very easily and that will lead to branch dieback in many cases. I learnt how to wire by practising on branches already removed. Bonsai Mirai do an excellent video class on this technique.

I am now at the stage where it is just the apical regions to sort out. As this is the first styling of a complicated clump I have left a lot more branches than the final design will require. All I am looking at now is to resolve any obvious flaws in the primary structure.

After about 5 hours work and £12 of different guage wire I am finished. This is the front that I have chosen for now and I may tilt the tree forwards when I do the repot next spring. The wire will be checked in about 9 months time though I expect it to remain in place for at least a year. Several of the cut trunks and branches will be turned into deadwood and shari later in the summer.

I am really happy how this has turned out and I am quietly optimistic for its future development. I am expecting some of the secondary branches to die as a result of clumsy wiring – but it happens! I ended up removing around 60% of the original foliage so I will keep it in a shady spot and give it time to recover. If all goes well I would hope to see new growth later in the year. I will dump a load of fertiliser on it once the summer is coming to an end.

So I hope this has peaked your interest in Juniper as a bonsai subject. They are easy to find and pretty cheap so all you need to invest in is the wire.

Happy bonsaing