How A Few Trees Will Get A Lot Better In 2018
It's a safe bet to say we spend most of our time in the pursuit of bonsai looking toward the future. Why? Well, with the exception of the perfect or "finished" bonsai on our benches, everything's a work in progress. So we look ahead to what we're going to do today...
How To Do A Successful Slip-Potting
Sooner or later you'll encounter a situation where you'll need (or really want) to move a tree from a nursery container to a bonsai container out of season. This can be done with a very high success rate, provided you bear in mind a few key principles. In this post...
How To Take Advantage Of Benign Neglect
You will inevitably acquire a tree that plods along, refusing to grow when it should and exhibiting no obvious reason why it's lagging behind your others. There are only a few things to be done in such cases: one, you rip it out of the pot and toss it on the compost...
How “Wading Bird” Gets Carved To Make It Look Better
I don't often name my trees but from time to time one comes along that just has to be named. "Wading Bird" the Bald cypress is one of those trees. For a little background, I collected this specimen back in February and placed it directly into this exquisite Chuck...
How To Make Great Designs A Little At A Time
I've shown you this Bald cypress forest, Taxodium distichum, in previous posts. It was bequeathed to me by Allen Gautreau, and old bonsai friend I'd known for 25 years. Allen did a really good job of designing this forest, including a nice selection of trees...
How I See This Wonderful Bonsai Journey. How About You?
Don't be alarmed. I promise not to wax lousy with philosophical babble about bonsai. But I do want to try and convey is how I see the art and pastime, and hopefully I'll hear from you so we can compare notes. As most of you know, I got passionately into bonsai...
Bald Cypress In July – How To Speed Up Development
Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, is one of the best species for bonsai and one I believe every beginner should have. They grow very fast, even in a small container. And the fast growth makes them quicker to train to showable condition. This specimen was...
Getting A Leg Up On A Bald Cypress Bonsai
I often try to get a leg up on developing bonsai. I typically do this by selecting trees I've collected that don't need any trunk development, or at most only minimal development. What does this mean? If you collect a tree and chop the trunk, and at the point of...
Bald Cypress Design Work: How To Maintain That All-Important Silhouette
You've been following along as I've worked on this Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, starting from a nice stick collected this past winter. The initial work was done a couple of months ago, when the new shoots had hardened off enough to allow for wiring without...
Starting A Sweetgum Bonsai: Helping A BC Get A Little Better
I've been growing this little Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, for three or four years now. The trunk was pretty straight, so I figured it would work better as a broom-form tree and chopped most of the trunk off. There were a couple of shoots growing close to...