Bunjin with Ben

markyscott

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Nearly six years ago I drove out to Lake Charles to work with Ben Oki when he came to town. I brought with me a boxwood dug up from a hedge row that I’d recently purchased. Ben is gone now, but I’m so glad I made the drive out there. It was the last time I saw him. Here’s Ben and I at the workshop.

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Scott
 

Rodrigo

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Looking forward to seeing this progression post Scott!
Apart from the sketch, do you have a picture of the tree today?
 

markyscott

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Unfortunately, I can no longer find the sketch. Hopefully it’s I’ll run across it in one of my folders of notes. In terms of the tree, fast forward two years. I bare-root repotted the tree, did some initial styling and branch placement and started to think about repositioning the tree. Here are a couple of pictures of the tree in July, 2015.

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Still working on branch placement at the time. Boxwood branches are brittle and hard to move. They’ll break pretty easily, so you have to be careful when repositioning major branches.

Scott8544BDF7-AA5F-4A3A-9DA6-A538C0C5C877.jpegC5173C4C-85B7-414D-A8EA-8C4963D856E7.jpeg
 

coh

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Really interesting tree to work on! Has a great trunk.

I can see enough of the sketch to know that it will look pretty good if you can get it anywhere close.

Can you do something like notching to help bend boxwood?
 

markyscott

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The following February I repotted the tree into the new position in a training pot. Here’s a before and after. Lower trunk is more upright now.

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What’s evident in these pictures is the Shari that runs up the front of the trunk. What I didn’t realize at this time was that the shari was significantly larger than I thought and that much of the bark on the right side of the trunk would flake off, expanding the shari significantly.

Scott
 

markyscott

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For the next two years I let it grow, but I did find a great pot to put it in during that stretch. I bought a really great round Mark Goodman pot that just fit the tree great. And it was pretty apropos because the first time I met Mark was:

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Back at that workshop with Ben in Lake Charles. Ben liked his tattoo.

Scott
 

markyscott

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Here’s the tree in the summer of this year before summer work.

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It’s in the MG pot now - I like the pot and the connection to that workshop with Ben. You can see the shari has expanded and the tree has really exploded with new growth over the last two years. It’s gotten very bushy.

It’s also evident how much the shari had expanded. As I worked on the tree, actually, I found that a big chunk of the shari had split and become quite loose.

Scott
 

markyscott

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For me, summer work on boxwood consists of removing old leaves, thinning the new growth back to two shoots and wiring the new growth into place. I wired out the tree completely and continued repositioning the major branches.

This year it also consisted of doing some repair work on the shari.

Franken-boxwood:
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After the glue dried I removed the clamps, but I left the wire holding the shari into place a bit longer.

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Scott
 

markyscott

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A few weeks later, I cleaned and applied lime sulfur to the deadwood and removed the remaining clamps. Here’s the tree a couple of weeks ago.

B459B53F-DE8C-46CC-8E8C-C36DD503A731.jpeg

It’s not exactly Ben’s picture, but I think that there’s progress. I have to admit that I find the bunjin style a real challenge to execute gracefully. I hope that somewhere up there Ben is happy. He better be - he already gave me this

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and I don’t want to give it back.

Scott
 

Adair M

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A few weeks later, I cleaned and applied lime sulfur to the deadwood and removed the remaining clamps. Here’s the tree a couple of weeks ago.

View attachment 207502

It’s not exactly Ben’s picture, but I think that there’s progress. I have to admit that I find the bunjin style a real challenge to execute gracefully. I hope that somewhere up there Ben is happy. He better be - he already gave me this

View attachment 207503

and I don’t want to give it back.

Scott
Scott, what did the wife think of you using all the bedroom toys on that tree?
 

Potawatomi13

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Excellent beginning at Master Okis work. Sparse foliage much better. Too much foliage presently/top heavy. Curious why more upright;)?
 

ralf

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Scott, it seems you have moved from "fertilizing tubes" to bags. Is there any significant advantage of bags?

The pic dated 26th Aug is much closer to my heart ( as a bunjin ).
 
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