juniper styling

hey all..

my name is Alex, i've been "doing" bonsai for a year now. i bought some starter trees and have a few garden center projects.. and i've succesfully guided them trough my first winter

today i worked a bit on my juniper i bought last year and wanted to show my progress

this is how i bought it a year ago


with someone from my club i wired it for the very first time.. i still didn't have any experience at all, so we just opened it up a bit and cleaned out the bad stuff.. so it isn't realy styled..


a bit later on i trimmed some stuff out and changed the angle of the tree and tried out some jin and shari.. it still doen't look like much cause i still didn't realy see the tree in it..


after winter (a few months ago) it looke like this, and was still just looking at it on a daily base on what to do.. there were several options i had in mind. one was to cut off everything appart from the 3 lowest branches and make a small shohin , a bit in the style of the one on bonsai4me.
the other option was to just let it grow and let the canvas fill out..


for the last few days i had been looking at the tree in several ways.. and than it hit me that i could try bend back the apex a complete 180° and create a whole new one.. so today i got out my raffia (even though it might not have been needed) and wire.


personally i think it might start to look like something..

so, what is the best follow up after a big operation like this? let the tree rest completely and feed a good? or just lay off the feeding for a bit?
i'm also keeping it in semi-shade for now.

Alax,, good job with your tree !! it looks a lot better since you brought the trunk line up.. keep posting.. john

I like it. One thing that many people new to bonsai over look are back branches. You should leave branches in the back so the tree has depth. If you get buds in the back, I would let them develop into back branches. Also, there is no need to feed until the tree starts growing again or wait a month or so.

For now and after most heavy pruning on junipers, you want to leave the tree alone to grow freely. Possible for a year or longer. Let it bush out again and get strong. Then you can prune back again. Only now, you might have more options

Rob

a lot of growth on there now, and some of the wire was growing into the bark, so i removed the wire and all styling remained in place..

before taking off wire, a week ago..

update

old front:


new front

Hi Alex. You have made a massive improvement by compacting the tree. Well done!   

thanks.. next step will be refining the shari and jin parts, and since most of the foliage can easily be tracked down for life veins, i can work on more deadwood to improve the taper between the big part and upper part.. (when i find a good grinding tool.. :p )

the tree this spring





a few years back, i took 2 branches of this tree and planted them.. they have rooted and are healthy with normal scale foliage
given the huge amount of juvenile foliage on this tree i'm planning to graft these 2 branches back onto their mother..
(unless i can get my hands on an itoigawa that i can use as supply source)