35+ Year Old Procumbens Juniper

As recipient of the Behr Bonsai Scholarship, I was able to spend a full weekend working with and learning from Walter Pall at Nature's Way Nursery, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In addition to the workshops I had signed up for personally, I was able to use the Scholarship for personal instruction with Walter. We had a great time, and the experience and knowledge I have gained through the experience will no doubt prove invaluable.

After two FULL days of workshops and private sessions, I selected a juniper to work on. I was to put to use the tools and skills that I had learned over the preceding days to style a rough piece of material for the first time. This is a before, during, and after series of how that first styling turned out. Let me know what you think.

Dave

Before:


After I made decisions on what to remove and refining the deadwood areas as well as cleaning the bark:



And after wiring and placing:

Hi DaveA

Lovely little tree. I am sure you had great days.
Did you bring your own material to work with, or were you and the others presentet to material?

Kind regards Yvonne

I brought a couple for Walter to look at, but the majority of the time was spent working on his extensive collection of American Yamadori that he keeps on the East coast of the USA. We pruned, repotted, removed mountain soil/duff, wired, styled, and discussed the futures of many ancient trees. It is important for everyone to realize, this sort of material cannot be rushed. We did only the work that each individual tree could tolerate. Some had been there longer, so we could bend and shape, others had recently arrived and were merely secured and fixed into pots. (which can be very tricky with the root systems most of these old collected trees have) Others were re-potted from nursery cans into more appropriate pots.

Dave

OK...this sound interesting...2 days of very good use

Greta job on the tree and I'm sure you had a great time at Woodstock!!! Jim and Walter do a great job with that and getting to work on some of the bigger collected stuff is an invaluable experience!!!

Very nice transformation.

I would like to see more photos, of more trees

Hey Dave! It was great meeting you at Natures Way! Connie and I enjoyed talking to you. Walter is a great guy and I was honored to meet him. Even though I was only a lurker, I learned a lot.

Next time I will be more involved.

Tom Kruegl

AND, the tree you did looks great!

T

Hi Dave,
Some substantial decisions are made,
good start.
Did Walter pushed you hard?
Regards, Sunip

bonsapien wrote:Hey Dave! It was great meeting you at Natures Way! Connie and I enjoyed talking to you. Walter is a great guy and I was honored to meet him. Even though I was only a lurker, I learned a lot.

Next time I will be more involved.

Tom Kruegl

Tom, nice to meet you both as well. Anybody who wants to talk bonsai is good in my book. See ya next year.

sunip wrote:Hi Dave,
Some substantial decisions are made,
good start.
Did Walter pushed you hard?
Regards, Sunip

Sunip, thanks. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

I certainly had bloody hands by the time we were through.

Oh, and we got ALOT of work done on some really great trees.

Dave

ndleong wrote:Very nice transformation.

Thankyou very much.


For Yvonne:

35+ years? I guess not

See over 15o images about this event here:

http://walter-pall-travelogues.blogspot.com/

Nik Rozman wrote:35+ years? I guess not

Why not. Do you have any idea how long it takes for a procumbins to get a trunk that size? I wouldn't doubt it was 35 years old.

Bob Pressler wrote:

Nik Rozman wrote:35+ years? I guess not

Why not. Do you have any idea how long it takes for a procumbins to get a trunk that size? I wouldn't doubt it was 35 years old.

No, no not the procumbins. I ment the other trees. The spruce and pines and other.