Giving Up That Branch You Love–
Why would you want to give up what you’re excited about? This doesn’t sound right, does it… Sometimes, of course, a cool branch is everything good about a tree, and then we have to feature it. But it’s easy to become stubbornly adamant about a branch, or other tree element like really nice shari, that […]
Shore Pine Design Exercise—Pt. 1
During rewiring a tree is a good time to rethink the design and look for ways to improve it. We gave this Shore Pine that kind of scrutiny this past week. This is one of our two-part series, which will conclude next week. Here is the Shore Pine before some changes. Next week we’ll show […]
Part II: Shore Pine Design Puzzle
Thank you all for sending in your design thoughts about this curious and complicated pine. There were some excellent designs. It is a truism about bonsai design that removing one thing often necessitates the removal of other things, in order to retain visual balance. And with pruning away overly long and repetitive branching we begin […]
Part I: Shore Pine Design Puzzle
In the past I’ve done a series of posts about one tree’s styling, and that’s what we’ll do with this tree here. But this time I’d like you offer you some head scratching… I used this Shore Pine, Pinus contorta subsp. contorta, as a design puzzle for several of my Fall Seasonal sessions, and had […]
Needle Juniper Restyling-
This tree is too tall. And the branches are a bit leggy, too. One of the problems we get into in bonsai design is that with time and growth, height and branch length can begin pulling us away from the trunk. Literally destroying the design, making it weaker. And this tree has a nice trunk, […]
A ‘Cliff Bonsai’—Western Hemlock Styling
We often think of cliff or rock faces being the place where cascade bonsai get their inspiration. And they do. But there’s another commonly seen growth habit in those steep, rocky areas… I collected this Hemlock, likely a Mountain / Western hybrid according to Anton Nijhuis, on Vancouver Island several years ago, where, coincidentally, it was […]
The Question of the Front…
Even the best front can become boring over time…a pot change, a change in inclination, or even a front change can enliven an old familiar tree and make it feel like we’ve suddenly got a new one. This ‘Chojubai’ quince has several front possibilities. This year we decided to shake it up a bit. The photo […]
Michael Hagedorn 