Reworking A Forest
This is a forest of Vine Maples, Acer circinatum, that came to the studio recently. Last week we took it apart and redesigned it.
This forest has older plants with a few young ones. The age range has promise, but there is a uniformity to the design. I see this a lot in Western bonsai—a “polite rootball” design, for lack of a better term. We tend to keep a full, 360-degree radial root system intact on our forest trees at the time of creation, which forces even-spaced placement.
Seasonal workshop students dismembering the forest. So far the root balls are full and radial. And for now, that’s OK.
This medium-sized Vine Maple was also bare-rooted. The forest could use a tree with this trunk width.
Here is the reworked forest. We left two trunks of the original forest out. Added the medium-sized trunk to the right. And repositioned the rest.
Now we have some trunks very close together. Students cut away parts of the root system to be able to place trees trunk-to-trunk, wood-on-wood.
It is best to wait to see where you want each tree before cutting a big hole in the root system. But being bold with the roots is what opens up placement possibilities, and which brings variation, negative space, and movement.
Single trees often have movement. Forest plantings can also have movement within the planting, which adds a level of delight to them.
6 Comments
Hi, good improvement!
I wonder why we all tend to make a left to right movement,composition in bonsai. Is it because most of us are right handed? Do left handed has the same tendency?
I was asking this same question to my mates recently and I thought it’s because we read from left to right 😉
Hi Paul! Thanks for the comment! I responded to Paolo’s comment which is all I have at the moment…
Excellent question Paolo! I see Paul has just asked the same. I wish I had any other answer but I suspect you may be right. We read left to right is sort the Occam’s razor answer——maybe there’s a simpler answer but I can’t think of one at the moment.
I think to test this, we might look at the proportion of right and left flow trees are in Japan. Japanese is read right to left. But I never thought of looking at how they create their bonsai.
Good question you raise! Maybe a blog post here…
Hello I’m an artist and when I got my first mentor he had me draw people/animals facing left. It was difficult and I asked why, he explained that right handed artists drew people/animals facing right and he said that anyone who he taught would learn…
I am happy to have found your blog, I’ve only been here for a few minutes and already I have twice the knowledge I came here with. Thanks.
My Dad taught me Bonsai as he learned it but I was just a kid, now that I’m grown I decided to start again. I’ve always loved it, but learned that it takes discipline. I planned a trip to visit my Dad and we could talk about my Bonsai and his. However he passed away a short time before I could go and my trip was to his funeral, so I do my Bonsai in memory of him. Thanks again.
Thanks for sharing your story, Dawn!