“Beavering” A Large Low Branch
When I was a kid we lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, and on the weekends would run up to the Berkshires, in the foothills of the Appalachians, to fill a few gallons with fresh spring water. It’s a beautiful wet and wild area. I caught my first brook trout (12”) up there, and saw my first […]
A Deeper Dive Into Decandling
It’s Japanese Black Pine decandling time again. Or it might be, depending on where you are. It is where I am, the Pacific Northwest, where we’re finishing up decandling this week. The decandling date will differ according to where you live, which is determined by latitude. Here in Portland, Oregon we cut end of May […]
Guest Post: Sergio Cuan
This week, I’m delighted to turn over the blog to Sergio Cuan. Sergio is one of my favorite bonsai artists. He also did all the sick illustrations in Bonsai Heresy. Since working on that project together, many have asked what Sergio’s background was, and I barely knew myself, saying, “Well, I think he worked for […]
How To Clean Up Tsukumo Cypress
A couple weeks back I did a post about cleaning up Junipers. In short, with a Juniper you cut any over-long shoots, pull off dangling shoots below the horizontal, and then pull off old shoots in the interior. But we shouldn’t pinch the living tips that remain. Tsukumo Cypress is a good comparison tree. It […]
How An Inverted Photo May Help Design Bonsai
If you like drawing, you may have tried to draw a family member from a photo, and then you may know how hard it is to find a likeness. You finish it, and the nose, eyes, and eyebrows are all in their proper places, but Aunt Jane it is not. We all have a basic […]
How To Clean Up Juniper Foliage
You may find the soft “clouds” of mature juniper foliage pleasant. Eventually this gets out of hand and we have a big thundercloud of foliage obliterating the structure of the tree. Which you may have spent a lot of effort wiring and setting. At this juncture some retooling is in order. This juniper has outgrown […]
How Limitation Can Spark: Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert
Keith Jarrett arrived in Koln, Germany to discover the grand piano he’d requested for his concert wasn’t there. By mistake, a baby grand sat on stage at the opera house, in a condition a lot worse than just out of tune. The pedals didn’t work. And it had poor bass and a tinny upper register. […]
Bonsai Integration
A couple weeks ago I posted about a Yellow Cedar, and got a few comments which said it wasn’t integrated. Which is a great critique. Because it isn’t. And I teach integration. Let’s use this Cedar as a sacrificial example, and compare it to others that are well-integrated. And then I’ll explain why I’ve not […]
An Important Distinction: ‘Decandling’ and ‘Breaking’ Pine Shoots
This is an edited post from 2016 on a topic I get asked a lot—deciding whether to break or decandle a pine. For starters, let’s define decandling and breaking— Breaking (or pinching) means taking part of the shoot off, usually with fingers, as the shoot is extending in early to mid-spring, and before the needles […]
A Yellow Cedar Gets Potted And Reset
This collected Yellow Cedar, Callitropsis nootkatensis, came from Vancouver Island, BC. We designed it six years ago, and in the following photo essay we transfer it from a box to a pot, and adjust the branches. Patch and Masaki removed the Yellow Cedar from the box and began exploring the root mass. We hoped it […]
