I had a comment on another juniper post this month that the finished tree looked like a pronghorn antelope… which was pretty apt I thought, and yet that name could well go for this one, too. It’s a Rocky Mountain juniper collected a few years ago by Randy Knight and purchased from Ryan Neil, and my apprentice Konnor and I styled it a couple weeks ago here in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Although I assisted in choosing the inclination, front, and setting the branches, most of the work including the wiring was done by Konnor. Much fun and some late evenings later, we ended up with this styling. Please let us know what you think!

We don’t incline trees just to make life difficult, really, although it must appear that way sometimes. I hope the root system does not have us do any really freaky bending techniques next spring to get it in a bonsai pot.

Konnor and I wiring the tree. Photo by Troy Cardoza on one of his impromptu and much enjoyed visits to the garden.

Here’s the final image. I forgot to measure the tree, but as you can see from the previous photo it’s a fairly modest sized large tree. Crazy old, that deadwood is fantastic. Please do let us know what you think of this. Actually just as I’m writing this it looks a bit like a scorpion… what do you think, Konnor? Did we make an arachnid?













