progression of an old juniper

hi, this old juniper was originally a tree belonging to Anne Swinton, and would have been imported late 60's early 70's. From the first picture it appears to have grown free for a good 10 years or more but certainly had enough branches to work with, but many were weak. I dont like to shock old trees with to much work in a single year so 3 years ago the tree was wired and styled sympathetically, (keeping much of the foliage on the tree so i could gauge its strength), the following year it was repotted. The repotting certainly rejuvenated the tree with lots of new strong tight growth appearing all over the tree so this year I could reduce the overall tree outline and thin the growth out a lot. I have removed practically all the weak branches now and yesterday had to thin a lot of the strong areas with deeper pruning to allow more light through the tree.


Day one - where to start


first styling finished over a month or so, keeping most foliage on the tree


2 years later and the top of the tree has been lowered a lot with a fencing strainer, some branches removed and a better balance between trunk and canopy is starting to form

From now on it will be fed gently with rapeseed cakes, pinched regularly and the individual clouds and layers defined some more.

Very nice tree Marcus and great progress , just a comment , i think the crown is to heavy and disturbs the balance of the tree.

Best regards Lazaros

nice tree
for me ...waiting for an important esthetic decision
the advantage ..i think ...is that you kept a lot of branches
so there is thousands of solutions to dynamise it
i draw two for you...but they re not the best ones i guess

if it were my tree...i d surely make a shari at the first curve of the trunk to accentuate the nice movement

euh...well it s only my vision....no judgement
this tree will be nice also without doing anything
just stronger if you revral the trunk line

well done for your work
friendly
seb
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Her's was the first bonsai book I had. I am always wondering what happened to her trees? She had an outstanding Red maple and Juniper.

Hello Marcus. Great start with this old Juniper.I think Sabastiens second drawing would be a good way to take this tree.

snobird wrote:Her's was the first bonsai book I had. I am always wondering what happened to her trees? She had an outstanding Red maple and Juniper.

hi, John Trott has the very big Juniper featured in the book, i dont know where the red maple is. i have this juniper and another similar tree from her collection that just needs thinning before i post up some pics of its progression

wow, thanks Sabastien for taking the time to do some drawings of the tree. Yes I see how a shari will show the movement in the lower trunk better, and I think taking the shari further up, spiralling round the back until it comes to the front again and joins to the first jin on the right will help tie the jins, shari and trunk movement together. Once the metal strainer is remover this shari can be extended further up too.

I like the foliage layout in the second drawing too, moving the canopy foliage to the side gives even more movement, thankyou again for your thoughts and effort.............my plan will be to cut in the lower shari now, and then allow strong growth to all the existing foliage for a year or two,. (just feeding, pinching, thinning etc) this will swell the growth lines and define them from the shari better, before reducing the branches and foliage to form a lighter image.

time to buy a piece of chalk and mock the shari before doing it for real.......

thanks everyone for the comments

Marcus