Snow Falling On A Yellow Cedar-
Apologies for the appropriation from David Guterson’s novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, but his suggestive title was roughly what I was attempting with this styling: When there’s enough of it, snow is heavy, and transforms that beneath it. This is a Yellow Cedar, Cupressus nootkatensis; a good sized tree, nearly 3′ across. The branches were long […]
2,520 Degree Ponderosa Pine
Two years ago I collected this Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) with Backcountry Bonsai. It was tucked under a full sized tree, somehow eking out a very long life. Seven full rotations is 2,520 degrees of twist around the trunk…a bit of an eye boggler. It lay prostrate and un-inspiringly in its box until this fall when […]
Ugly vs. Pretty Styling
For any styling it’s good to ask: Do we leave it rough, or do we polish it off to as crystalized an image as we can? And the answer usually is, as with many things in bonsai, it depends. When is leaving a mess appropriate? With very aggressive work, with large branches and even trunks moved […]
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, […]
Revisiting a Cascade Juniper-
Here’s a Rocky Mountain Juniper some of you might recognize…collected by Randy Knight, and styled about three years ago into a cascade. The tree has been repotted since the initial styling, and it was rewired last week. This post is a photo essay of that rewiring… Before rewiring: Rocky Mountain Juniper having grown for several […]
Bunjin #2: Lodgepole Pine
Second up in our tale of two bunjin is this Lodgepole Pine, Pinus contorta subsp. murrayana, which I collected in the fall of 2013. It’s almost assumed that wire is used when styling a pine. But here’s one that didn’t need any. It was styled by simply removing what wasn’t already interesting… This photo is from the fall of 2014. The box is tipped […]
Bunjin #1: Shore Pine
First up in our tale of two bunjin…this Shore pine (Pinus contorta subsp. contorta) is from Vancouver Island, BC, collected by the eminent and excellent sir Peter Wilson. The tree was potted this past spring, 2015, in the pot shown, and styled in late winter 2016. We wired nearly every branch and shoot on this Shore pine. The […]
90 Year-Old Black Pine Wired by Bobby Curttright-
This Japanese Black Pine, Pinus thunbergii, was wired by Bobby Curttright. Bobby has been my apprentice for over 2 1/2 years now, and his wiring is becoming quite accomplished. The necessary fine attention to detail reaches a level of nerd-dom with the best wire wranglers. He’s been a quick study with it, and his organization and […]
