EOT 10: Shimpaku Juniper 3

This Kishu was grown by Telperion Nursery outside of Portland, Oregon. It made its way to Dogwood Studios in the fall of 2018 along with a truckload of trees l hauled across the US. Along with turning this into a nice bonsai, I wanted to use this tree as a parent plant for propagating the nice Kishu foliage

Notice the angle of the branch in the middle. This will get cranked inward toward the trunk as much as possible over a number of 

sessions

You can see that the initial shape has been set with a large mass of foliage left on top which will be used as cuttings taken later in that spring when the weather warms. 

The future bonsai design is there, now it just needs to grow.

It was mid-spring and I was demolishing the house bar on my new nursery site which would serve as the frame for my new bonsai studio. In an attempt to do some fun bonsai work, I brought the juniper in to clean it up, check 

the wire that was on it, and remove some of the sacrifice branches saved for propagation purposes.

You can see that a number of the sacrifice branches were removed. Now more energy will be directed into the lower foliage mass. Additionally, more sunlight will pass through and this area will begin to gain some real strength. Many cuttings were made!

A lot has changed! Now I was working in a real studio. And the juniper was growing strong. You can see that all the remaining sacrifice branches have grown even stronger as well as the lower foliage mass that will make the future bonsai. 

 I removed the bulk of the remaining sacrificial foilage and again made another batch of cuttings. I cleaned the dead foilage and thinned the weak growth. Most of the energy will now go to putting on the foilage mass of our bonsai.

Mid-summer is a great time to thin out overgrown junipers to keep them healthy and strong. I once again brought the juniper in to clean it up and possibly style it. After a light cleanup, I waited a bit longer before styling.

Before-Fall has arrived and I was ready to style this bush. The over-foilage mass has grown very strong and healthy. Now time to study the tree and hone in on a design. I had always seen this as a chunky informal upright, but maybe there is something else

One issue I always have with this juniper was that the lowest branch on either side of the tree were extending from the tree at similar heights. I decided that since the branch on the lower left had gained a lot of strength, tilting the tree in that direction gave the design more movement and more interest. So we will have a semi-cascade style. Still the over-foilage mass will need to grow and branches need to mature, especially in the apical region, but we have a bonsai 

now! I still have a few bits of sacrificial foilage that I will use for cuttings next spring. Additionally, I will repot it next spring in a more appropriate pot at a new inclination. Looking forward to the refinement stages of this Kishu juniper.