by Zach Smith | Sep 16, 2016 | Care, Pines, Potting, Soil, Styling
Several years ago I bought 50 Japanese black pine, Pinus thunbergiana, seedlings. I hadn’t worked much with pines but wanted to give it another try, and I knew that JBP does very well here in the Deep South. Hence plenty of raw material.
I planted about 30-40 of them in the ground, most in a clearing at the back of my property; the rest went into either pots or another ground growing area in full sun. Then I waited to see how they’d do. I lost some the first year, then more the second year. By the third year it was time to have some trees removed from my property, and the tree cutters found a great spot to roll the logs prior to removing them – right over the bulk of my pines. I didn’t find any trace of them.
Now I was down to about eight seedlings left. I did some in-ground training on the ones I’d planted out of harm’s way, and left the ones in pots alone. Another couple of years went by, and one by one they all died – all except for one lone specimen in a pot. I ignored this survivor, except for feeding and overwatering it. I had stuck it in a pot with really lousy soil – I’m not even sure how I put that soil together, it was so mucky. But the tree trooped on, growing ever so slowly.
Earlier this year I noticed this tree had grown a pretty long leader, but had some nice lower branching. Since it had decided not to die, despite every effort on my part, I went ahead and cut off the leader. Then proceeded to ignore it some more.
Today I got a wild hair and decided this valiant JBP deserved a shot at a bonsai pot. So here’s the result:
It’s a nice looking little tree, isn’t it? While it’s not particularly large, it is at least 10 years old. The trunk has some nice movement, and there’s a decent set of branches. Now, I’m pretty confident this guy isn’t going to last through the coming winter, maybe not even to the arrival of winter, but we do have an understanding between us. It’s going right back to neglect-ville, which is my bonsai secret weapon. If it survives, I’ll drag it out in spring and post an updated photo. If not, then of course we won’t speak of it again.
by Zach Smith | Sep 12, 2016 | Care, Potting, Styling, Yaupon
Let’s face it, sometimes we’ll style and pot a tree and then decide the pot isn’t quite right. It happens, despite our best efforts. The good news is, you can always change pots. What’s critical, of course, is to get it right the second time if you misfire the first time. Let’s take a look at a specific example, and I’ll explain the thought process and some design principles to show how I decided what needed to change and why.
You’ve been following the saga of this yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria, since this past winter when I collected and direct-potted the tree into this nice Byron Myrick oval. The tree is terrific, and so is the pot. And the pot is acceptable … but, it’s just not quite right. I’ve been looking at the tree now for several months, and I finally reached a point where I had to take action.
You may want to study this photo for a couple of minutes before reading on and viewing the next shot. What strikes you about the composition? This is a triple-trunk specimen, with nice graceful movement in the trunks. It’s potted in the right position in the pot – slightly off-center thereby producing the proper balance (you can envision the scalene triangle formed by the earth, the outer tips of the branches of the left-hand trunk and the tips of the three trunks moving toward the earth). But despite all of this, there’s just something not quite right. Can you name some flaws associated with the pot?
Here’s an analysis of the problem with this composition, which lies completely with the choice of pot. While the pot depth is fine, it’s too long and the sides are too straight; taken together, the pot looks “heavy” with respect to the tree and draws the attention away from the overall composition. This has to be corrected.
Here’s the tree in its new Chuck Iker home. I think the composition has improved dramatically. This pot has curved sides, which complement the graceful movement of the trunks. The size is much more in keeping with the tree itself. The pot isn’t “heavy.” When you view the tree, your eye isn’t attracted to the pot itself to the exclusion of the tree. Rather, the eye moves throughout the composition as it should, never coming to rest in one spot.
This pot is a round, by the way, so the rule is you put the tree in the center.
Let me know your thoughts on this transformation. Do you think the bonsai has been improved?
by Zach Smith | Sep 4, 2016 | Care, Oaks, Potting, Styling
Earlier this year I decided to make a forest planting of water oaks. It was a noble idea. I had some material and I had the pot, so why not?
Here’s what I had after some digging, positioning and filling the pot with soil. Not too bad.
I know what you’re probably thinking and yes, I know there are six trees here and it’s not an odd number and forest plantings need to have an odd number of trees (up to about 11). My plan was to add another tree to bring the number to seven. That sounded like it would bring some good luck to the forest. I wasn’t sure when that was going to happen, though.
Obviously not soon enough, and so, six being an unlucky number two of the trees in my new forest up and died. I’m not a fan of forest plantings with dead trees in them, so there was only one thing to do – take it apart and figure out what to do with the living trees.
I had an old Tokoname tray sitting on a shelf, so I put together a little three-tree forest (the two small trunks are actually connected). To be honest, while it was okay to have this planting and I was happy the trees stayed alive, it just didn’t quite strike me as artistic in its composition. No rules are broken, and it seems to meet the standards for bonsai forest design to a pretty decent degree. But there was just something not quite right about this composition from the start.
It finally struck me that one of the key features of this small grouping is the extreme height of the main tree. It’s certainly all right to have trees in a bonsai forest that are quite tall relative to the thickness of their trunks; no problem there. But in this case the height is exaggerated because there aren’t more tall trees surrounding this tall tree. You can get away with one very tall tree as long as there are others around it of similar height – this is the essence, in fact, of most forest plantings. But it’s not happening with this three-tree composition.
There was only one thing to do, in my opinion. You can get away with overly tall trees in two bonsai styles: forests and bunjin. The fact that I have a three-tree forest notwithstanding, the only way to make this group look “right” was to render it a more bunjin-style bonsai. So the obvious answer was to reduce the size of the pot, exaggerating the height of the tall tree even more. I had this new Shawn Bokeno oval on the shelf, and it seemed to fit the bill.
You may want to spend a few minutes studying this design. Notice how each of the trunks has a distinctive movement toward the right as you go up the trunk. This makes for harmony among them, and this is enhanced by the fact that each trunk gets progressively thinner as your eye moves from one tree to the next. They move in synch. Their foliage masses are arranged in a pleasing fashion, with the lowest branch on the shortest trunk, with successive branches being higher and higher as you move from smallest to largest trunk. You can see a great degree of visual depth in this forest, which is created by having the smallest tree placed at the rear of the group. Also notice that the trunks get closer together as they get smaller. All in all, I think there’s now some artistry in this forest design.
Hopefully these trees will come through having been potted and then repotted twice in the same growing season. I couldn’t keep looking at them the way they were, though, so I had to take the chance.
Now, there’s plenty of work to be done on this new bonsai. Obviously the trees still have their full-size leaves. Over time I’ll be able to reduce the size of the leaves greatly, with pruning and pinching, and this bonsai will ultimately look very realistic. But that work is for another day.
I’d love to hear what you think of this bonsai. Do you like this rendering better or the one above?
by Zach Smith | Aug 14, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Hornbeam, Potting, Styling, Sweetgum
These two bald cypresses came out of the swamp together, having grown for some time as natural companions. I could see a two tree flat-top pairing right off the bat. Knowing I could create the entire crown of each tree in a bonsai pot, I went ahead and put the pair in this Byron Myrick oval. Then I waited.
It took a couple of months, but I finally got enough growth going to start wiring the new leaders. Not much to look at, are they? (Actually, they grew like crazy bushes; I took off over 90% of the growth before doing this wiring.)
A couple months later, we’ve got some good growth going. Time for a trim and more wiring.
They’re back to not looking like much, but if you strain you can see the crown taking shape on the larger specimen. I’d predict that by the end of next growing season, I’ll have a really nice flat-top structure in place. I’ll keep you posted.
Here’s a sweetgum bonsai that I just made today. It too doesn’t look like much, but that’s because I cut off all the large leaves in order to promote a new crop of smaller leaves. I’ll diligently pinch the growing tips, which is the secret to training sweetgums during the growing season. I should have a nice bit of foliage on the tree by next month.
This is a small specimen, with a trunk base of 3/4″ and a height of 14″. What I like about it is, it’s a good example of the natural growth habit of sweetgum, which is columnar. By keeping the branches short, I can emphasize this great feature of the species.
The pot is a beautiful oval by Chuck Iker. In case I get fall color this year, the pot color will complement it very nicely.
Finally, I wired up this Eastern hophornbeam, Ostrya virginiana, which I had direct-potted this past winter when I collected it. I cut off the leaves the other day, to promote a final flush of growth this season.
Hophornbeam is one of the relatively few species of trees that holds its leaves through winter – American beech and Southern sugar maple being two others in my neck of the woods. They also feature a nice rough bark, versus American hornbeam with its smooth bark. They’re difficult to collect, as they don’t like to have their roots disturbed.
This specimen has a 1″ trunk base and is 11.5″ tall. Another great Chuck Iker pot.
by Zach Smith | Aug 6, 2016 | Care, Dogwood, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
I posted a blog on this Roughleaf dogwood,
Cornus drummondii, this past Thursday. The tree was collected in January of this year, and after a slow start really took off. As I mentioned Thursday, the tree has a lot going for it in terms of character. Given that plus the fact that the tree has recovered so well and quickly, I decided that today I would go ahead and do the initial styling on it. One thing I wanted to avoid was allowing the new branches to get too stiff to bend in 2017.
This view is from the back of the tree. I wanted to illustrate the design principle of making your decisions beginning with things you are very sure of, then moving on through to the things you aren’t so sure of. In this case, there’s a long and straight branch emerging at a sharp angle from the main trunk that, for reasons I can’t explain, I left on the tree. Clearly this branch has to either be removed completely or reduced greatly in length. I was able to cut to a new shoot down the branch, so I did that to get started on the “editing” of the tree.
Here you can see that I’ve shortened the offending branch. It’s not likely to play a part in the final design, but I left part of it on for now (you can always cut more off of the material you’re working on; putting something back on that you just cut off doesn’t work at all).
You may recall from Thursday my impression that I would be cutting to the branch shown here moving off to the left at a good angle, as my primary trunk line. As I studied the tree this morning, I changed my mind. The reason for this has to do with how the tree emerges from the soil. While that particular trunk line could be made to work, I have in mind a round pot for this tree and based on this I felt the tree should terminate in a more upright position. Now, if down the road I change my mind (or the tree’s new owner does so) there won’t be any problem in restyling the tree. But for now, I decided to go with the upright trunk line.
In this photo I’ve cut back the old leader – which was going to happen regardless.
Here I’ve used a wooden block to move the tree into its ultimate potting angle. This will help me as I choose and position branches.
The main trunk gets chopped back to the where the new leader emerges from it.
After much editing of shoots that won’t be part of the final design. You can see the bonsai starting to really take shape. Isn’t the trunk character terrific?
Here I’ve wired all of the branches and the new leader, and positioned them.
I slip-potted the tree into this nice Byron Myrick round, to the greatest extent I could, in order to prevent damage to the roots. I did have to trim some to fit the tree in the right spot in the pot, but overall they got “bruised” to the minimum possible degree.
I really like the way this Dogwood bonsai turned out. By doing the initial styling and potting this year, the tree can get a head-start on next year’s development. All that’s left at this point is to thicken up and develop the crown of the tree, and pinch and prune the branching to create ramification. Roughleaf dogwood is much easier to develop into a well-ramified specimen than its cousin the Flowering dogwood. Don’t get me wrong, I love both species, but each has its own features.
If you’re interested in native species as bonsai, this tree is available at our Miscellaneous Bonsai page. It ships in September.
by Zach Smith | Jul 24, 2016 | Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm
As I’ve written on at least a couple of occasions, sometimes our best intentions when collecting or working on trees just don’t pan out. Sometimes a tree will die, but just as often a tree may die only partly. You can’t always make something out of these unfortunates, but then again sometimes you can.
A couple of years ago I collecting this Water-elm, Planera aquatica. It started re-budding within a week … at which point I knew it probably wouldn’t make it. As a general rule, at least for Water-elms, if the collected trees starts budding out a week after you collect it it ends up dying. Two to three weeks after collection is a good sign. In the case of this tree, I fully expected it to die. However, it actually put out new growth down the trunk (in more places than you see here), so I kept it watered and ignored it.
Here we are two years later, and part of this tree wants to live. Ordinarily you’d look at what’s here and think, “No way anything will come of it.” So did I, actually. But it was easier to ignore the tree than to unceremoniously pull it from the pot and toss it, so I left it alone.
Fast-forward to 2016, and the tree has put on a four foot-long shoot. What’s not alive on this specimen is rotting away. But there’s a definite clinging to life, so I couldn’t help but think “Maybe I can make something out of it.”
In this photo, you can see more clearly the living vein of wood that’s sustaining the nice little clump of shoots (five, to be exact; I’m liking that prospect). The next order of business will be to cut away all the dead wood. I need to get down to the lemonade in this lemon.
First went the upper trunk; all dead and rotting away.
Now I split off the wood surroun
ding the live vein.
Just about all the dead wood has been cut away in this photo. Although it looks like I could make an upright bonsai out of this remaining material, I’ve got other plans.
First, here’s the root mass associated with this tree. Not bad considering most of the tree died! Now, on to the “finished” product.
I thought that using a stone might be the best way to showcase this survivor. As for the stone, it’s actually a fossil. Over 20 years ago my daughter and I, while creek-walking near our home, stumbled across a number of pieces of petrified palm wood. I still have a good bit of it. While it’s not the sturdiest petrified wood you’ll ever run across, certain pieces of it are fairly tough. For this tree, I was able to make use of a lengthier piece of the stone. I draped some roots over and into the soil, and covered most of the exposed root with moss to keep it from drying out. Only time will tell if the roots decide to grab hold of the stone.
I also need to do considerable work to the three branches I left on the live vein from above, which now forms the main trunk of this tree. But that’s for another time. For now, I’ll just feed and water this unusual Water-elm landscape planting.
I’d love to hear any feedback you might have. Just leave a comment below.
