San Jose Juniper

This is a little San Jose Juniper I'm working on. I'm at the stage of developing foliage pads, and I'm posting to see if anyone has thoughts on the direction the tree is going in. The tree is shohin size, probably about 10 inches tall.




The story so far: started life as a garden centre bush. It has been worked on for a few years, growing branches, growing an upper trunk, working on the roots etc. I'm satisfied with the overall shape of the trunk, the live/dead areas and so on. There is a back branch that's not clear in the picture, just above the first RHS branch.



The deadwood is only roughly shaped and will need refining, but not for a couple of years. The silly little toothpick jin between the first and second branches on the left will be shortened to a stub.

I plan to repot later this year, and work on developing the foliage pads. This is a rough sketch of what I have in mind.



However, I'm not sure whether to develop the apex towards the left (in line with the angle of the trunk) or more to the right (introducing a curving movement). Also, there's a possible image where the first right hand branch extends much further to the right and drops downwards.

Any thoughts would be welcome!

Thanks,
Tom

Hello Tom. Your tree looks like its heading in the right direction. Why are you leaving the deadwood for a while? There's nothing stopping you from finishing it off right now. The tree is well proportioned, well balanced and looks very healthy. Development of the foliage and you have a very fine tree

Will - thanks for the comments. The reason I'm leaving the deadwood is that I don't currently have a clear idea of what I need to do in terms of refining it. So I'm just leaving it as it is for now - I don't want to rush in with the power tools and mess things up. I've made that mistake before

I like it. The next one I would have 'candy caned' the live vein to take eye off of any stiffness in trunk line.

Q