A Juniper Makeover
This juniper was one of the first restyling adventures of my new apprentice, Patch Clark.
This is how the juniper came into the yard. I gave the design lead on the tree to Patch.
This was Patch’s instinct with the tree. I agreed. There is more activity in the trunk line, and the lean also increases its drama.
Patch did a whiteout of the design intention.
After the initial rework we took a look at it together. Patch asked if we might remove a few branches because it felt a bit heavy with all that foliage on a thin trunk. Thumbs up! A thin trunk not only looks best with less foliage, but less foliage only grows a thin trunk. (Conversely, if you have a thick trunk with thin foliage, the communication is that it is dying.)
We agreed on these branches to remove, indicated with “white-out” rags.
The juniper following branch removal and final tweaking. It is a simple tree, like many of our bonsai, but we enjoyed this restyling.
12 Comments
Awesome job Patch !
Love the reduction in foliage and makes the tree so much more elegant .
Now would love to see it in a special pot sometime later . Would love to hear about Patch’s thoughts or dreams .
Can’t wait to meet you next year sometime .
Thanks Abhishek! We’ll check back in about pot. Will be a good part two!
Nice! Cheers guys and Happy New Year.
Happy New Year Michael! Hope your tree ring is off to a good start.
Outstanding! When, during the year, was the work done?
Hi Otto— we did this in the dormant season, late fall. Though with juniper you can do this sort of work at almost any time, though I would urge more caution with bending around repotting time.
Hurrah, Patch! Great work 🙂
Cheers! Thanks Reid- good to see you in the semi-private last month-
This is an excellent example of how the many thousands of junipers that flood most bonsai clubs can be further refined to be a better representation of the art! Well done fellas!
Thanks Josh! Many junipers are not going to win awards, but they are no less worthy for that. We can still make them look as good as we can.
You made a rather common tree into a beautiful bonsai. Great blog article.
Delighted you enjoyed it, we’ll try some more like this.