Hello Taylor,
I have been looking for a few pictures since I first read your post.
Just last night while in chat with your dad I remembered where they were hiding.
This Birdsnest Spruce was a demo that I did for the Susquehana bonsai club 10 years ago!
I had collected this pretty large BS about 2-3 years earlier from landscaping and placed it in a big plastic training tray and cut it back pretty severely.
It spent the 2-3 years recouperating and rooting very well and filling back out wth foliage. Foliage that re-grew was pretty thick.
It originally had a large dead center in the plant with broken off branches, like something heavy had fallen into the plant in the landscaping ( Maybe a person!) . Most of the dead stuff I just broke off and left alone as I knew I would work with it later.
I did the demo during a 2-21/2 hour meeting of the club at a nursery near Baltimore. The tree was potted and wired at the meeting. After the tree was raffled at the meeting I returned with it to Jim Doyles "Natures Way Nursery" to spend a couple more hours carving the dead wood and to do some finer wiring.
I took these old print photos in Jim's Tokonoma in his shop. I'm sorry about the quality but they are scanned prints which were pretty crummy to begin with.
The pot was like one I have outside now which I just measured and it is 21" across, soooo, with some careful measuring on the photo I can determine the finished styled tree was pretty close to 39" across.
I have no idea what ever became of the tree after I left it to the winner.
This is/was as my teacher used to say, "A bonsai beginning". A first styling from collected material.
Several years before this my teacher, Keith Scott, and I had purchased 30 very large birdsnest spruces with anticipation of retail sales. A few of these I still have planted in my garden landscaping and they have grown enourmous trunks over the 17ish years since I planted them. They require HEAVY pruning every few years and grow back to fill in wonderfully.
I have found that they do well in MY full sun all summer ( NE Ohio) and that they can be kept on the drier side as compaired to most plants. Basically, I treat them like most of my conifers. They do seem to grow roots quite quickly and fill a pot pretty quick. The roots are thick and fleshy and not really very attractive, but the buttresses get pretty nice. I always thought that these spruce roots looked like a bowl of spaghetti!
Heavy branches can be slowly moved over a few years using guy wires. You can cut back each season to produce back-budding but do not go beyond the foliage limits.
Hardiness is NO problem in your zone.
Please, enjoy bonsai and keep up the collecting. I wish my boys had shown your interest!
Regards,
Dale