Fall Color And Flower Buds – BC And Huckleberry
Here's one of my landscape Bald cypresses that I've grown from seed since 2000. It gets bigger and better each year. Isn't the color just terrific? This one is just starting to put on its bronze for the year. Once the colors start, you've got maybe a week...
A Few Rules For Slip-Potting
Those of you who have been with us for a while know I love to slip-pot trees. Why? Well, I guess the biggest reason is I'm impatient to see a tree progress toward its best self. Another reason is that a lot of trees pass through my hands, and often it's just...
Fun Fast Bonsai Development
I love fast-developing trees. Some species and styles naturally lend themselves to rapid progress. The flat-top Bald cypress is a perfect example of this phenomenon. This specimen was collected in Winter 2019, and here's how it looked after the initial styling...
Fourth Of July Bonsai Odds & Ends – Cedar Elm, BC, Chinzan Azalea
I potted this small Cedar elm earlier this season. It's been growing away, minding its own business. Recently we had a couple of storms and somehow this tree got picked to be blown off the bench. It stayed in the pot and no branches were broken, but the second...
Summer Progress – Cedar Elm, Sweetgum, BC
You've been following along as I've developed this Cedar elm, starting in 2017 when it was first collected. The tree is filling out well, and the ramification is getting tighter with each pruning/pinching. All in all, time and technique are working their magic....
Its’ Shaggy BC Time!
I started working on this Bald cypress last year. It's progressing very well, as you'll see when you compare these photos with the one from last year I included below. We're into summer now, and you can generally count on cypresses to take on a "shaggy"...
Bonsai Odds & Ends – BC, Sweetgum, Water-Elm
Here's a nice, slender Bald cypress from this year's crop. I had planned from the start to hold the tree and make it into a flat-top style. It's grown out enough now that I can do the initial styling on it. About 20 minutes later, this is what I ended up...
Making Nice Bonsai From Ordinary Material
This is a run of the mill Bald cypress seedling (about 3 years old in 2017) that I decided to play around with in July of that year. How about a windswept cypress, I thought? So I wired it from bottom to top and stuck it in a Byron Myrick oval I had on hand. ...
BC Forest Update And Work
You may remember this Bald cypress forest from my recent blog about it. I had replaced two of the trees and added another two. Those new additions are now growing, so today seemed like a perfect time to do some work on the taller specimens. First order of...
Bald Cypress Reforestation
I assembled this Bald cypress forest a couple of years ago. It's done all right, but it's also had its challenges. I've neglected this planting in favor of other bonsai, but this year I decided it was time to bring it back to "life." All but one of the trees...