Serissa - discuss!

[JoeR]

repotted my favorite tree last night, a gift from a friend. this was only my second repot (here's hoping i didn't kill it...) so mistakes were made- potted a little too high and missed the angle a bit, but i'm happy overall with the experience. took me about three hours all in all, especially carefully working the soil out of the roots. lots of misting.

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it was given to me in a traditional cascade pot with a very dense loam/sand mix and was percolating extremely slowly, so before it's to come in for the winter i decided to put it in an intermediate pot with a soil i could more easily read (monto clay and bonsai block, i think it's similar to turface? if anyone has any suggestions for a favorite mix for serissa, let me know!). in the new potting i brought the top of the nebari to the surface and started to try an encourage a flare in the roots, but it'll need more work in the future.

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the wires have been on it for a month or so, starting to work it towards my vision for it. it was putting out it's second wave of flowers after the peak summer heat started to come down, so after i repotted it last night, i spent an hour or two this afternoon trimming off the buds and flowers to reduce energy consumption. or that was my thinking at least.

Very nice, i love the double white which this looks to be. Although, i am a little confused about the design. Neither picture looks like its the best front, with branches crossing and not having an overall... coherent flow? Could be the angles are just slightly off. I like the natural aesthetic the tree has, which shouldn't be lost but rather enhanced, however I think some order to the branches would improve the design. You said you have a vision, so you might already know this

 

[tainoson]

Very nice, i love the double white which this looks to be. Although, i am a little confused about the design. Neither picture looks like its the best front, with branches crossing and not having an overall... coherent flow? Could be the angles are just slightly off. I like the natural aesthetic the tree has, which shouldn't be lost but rather enhanced, however I think some order to the branches would improve the design. You said you have a vision, so you might already know this

yeah, the photos were rushed and and the tree has a looooong way to go. and it is a double white! although she puts out triple and quadruple flowers as well!



what i'm working towards is draw the center trunks together a bit, but have a nice canopy, something orderly but not organized.
and then the two lower branches which kind of swing around- they're almost exactly on opposite sides and they already have a counter-clockwise swirl shape, but i want to figure out how to make them make sense.

i'm trying to preserve as much of the tree as it was given to me. the owner said he had gotten it about forty years ago and believed the tree to be about 50. i'd hate to waste that growth!