Juniper Styling Decisions

[Matt B]

I have a juniper that needs some decisions to be made before I figure out the next step in its journey. This tree came to me one day a year ago when I was driving to work and found a standard landscape juniper that had apparently fallen off a truck and gotten run over a couple times. I stopped and grabbed it and it sat in my car all day in Florida sun, and I potted it up when I got home. It made a great recovery and in the fall I did a bit of snipping and some awful noob wiring and turned it into what it is today. It has been growing like a champ this season.

I ran into a wall with this tree because I just don't know where to take it from here. The areas of concern are the left trunk splitting at an awkward angle into two equal sized branches, and the unruly large front branch on the right trunk that seems too thick to change and have it look complementary to any design.

I suppose I could lop off the entire left trunk or the topmost think branch of the left trunk, and have a much easier time imagining what to do with the remainder. The right trunk is a bit difficult to see in 2D, which is why I drew the overlay to show where the branches go, and provided lots of photos. I know its not much to see at this point, but hey, I worked with what the road gave me. Thanks be to whoever wastes their time giving me some much needed inspiration.

 

[Matt B]

 

[sorce]

Great method of Acquisition.

Surely worth working.

For me, the simple answer is grow it out some.

The in depth answer, ....if you let me see that dish under the tree better...is it marbled clay?

Sorce

 

[ihaveaspaceship]

You can compact it all down and make it smaller. remove the straight branching by applying rafia and heavy wire then just bending the branches and scrunching them toward the trunk. Do this in the winter/early spring to avoid killing a branch since you might want to go pretty hard on the bends.

Watch Bijorn on youtube. He styles a juniper by doing this exact thing.

 

[Matt B]

That's not a dish, Sorce. That's a crappy decorative pot that appears to be made out of some weird plaster of the consistency of drywall with a decorative wrap applied to the outside to make it LOOK like something so fancy as marbled clay. I somehow acquired two of them a few years ago, and they seem to work better for elevating another pot than as pots themselves. Now that I dropped that disappointing news, let me know what you would do!

 

[Matt B]

That's an interesting idea, Space. I'm not sure if I have the ability to pull off that kind of advanced technique, but I'll look into it.

 

[sorce]

Love!

They are talking about the Difference Between constant training and letting things go in another thread currently.

I believe with juniper, you can do either.

So of you choose to let it grow out for years, and come back to it in one sitting, and make a tree, you can.

But I would slowly create something intentional, with that wee first right branch.

IMO...the fastest tree...good tree...from this material, comes from that little branch as everything the tree will be in the future. Say 5-20 years.

Enter my cup theory. Slowly removing other stuff as that tree comes into it's own. Keeping the same amount of folaige as you have now. But slowly "moving" it to your "final tree". That little branch.

I think good trees can come from either method, this method is more deliberate. Of course, listening to what the tree wants to be takes precedence, so if it decodes a different direction in the future, we should obey.

Sorce

 

[Matt B]

So you see the whole tree vanishing and turning it into a cascade eventually with the right trunk being eventually chopped above that first branch on the far right? Like this plus a few years of growth?

I'd like the final size to be close to what it is currently (though with a suitable pot), and definitely not feeling a cascade. A juni cascade, even a well executed one looks too mallzai to me. Its not the styles fault, it was around for hundreds of years. It the fault of the people that churn out juni cascades by the billions for the big box stores. It just burned them out for me.

I was thinking something that used as much of the trunk as possible, as that is the part that takes time. Ramification and building foliage can be achieved in a few years. If the twin trunk was going to take too much work and time, it could come off. The right trunk has movement and plenty of choices in branches to develop.

Maybe its that i haven't had enough experience in seeing the tree within the tree that I get this artistic void, and need to solicit advice. What's the cure? How do I develop an eye for seeing what is there for me to work with and what the tree could be?

 

[ShadyStump]

Folks talk wiring and we forget that there's more options there than wrapping the branch in wire.
I'd use guy wires, maybe with some sticks as props, on you sturdier branches. Then, as Sorce said, let it grow out some. Tighten the guy wires and adjust your props every couple months until you get the angles you want. This also let's you remove the wires to check on growth and formation and put them back if necessary with less work.

 

[Matt B]

Shady, maybe I might employ guy wires after I get it into a proper bonsai pot, where I can get the tree wired into place to get the leverage. Right now its in organics and pumice, with no wires fixing its location. There's no way to get the leverage right now. But that's not my biggest fish to fry right now. I think my biggest problem is I can't form an image in my mind of how I want the tree to look. I need to figure that out before I start employing techniques.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I would use the wire to add a lot of character to the branches... and I would also consider rethinking it as a partial or full cascade. If you look at your first image, your foliage mass forms a perfect flat-top. Take the flat-top and angle it 45 degrees... and voila! Balance! Even though in this virt you still have branches that are too long and branches that are too straight, you can immediately see where the tree can be brought for the future. Think about this tree in a cascade pot about 1/2 the diameter... and with the tree centered... and it would be dramatically improved.

 

[doctorater]

Seems the choice between Sorce's idea and Bonsai Nut's is whether Matt wants nice looking results more sooner or more later.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

more sooner or more later.

I wouldn't say that. I would just say that with any tree there are numerous roads to success. Some are obvious... some less so. My virt wasn't intended to be an idea of a good bonsai today... but rather a path to take with this tree for the future.

 

[doctorater]

I wouldn't say that. I would just say that with any tree there are numerous roads to success. Some are obvious... some less so. My virt wasn't intended to be an idea of a good bonsai today... but rather a path to take with this tree for the future.

Sorry, Nut, didn't mean to give your post meaning you didn't intend.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Sorry, Nut, didn't mean to give your post meaning you didn't intend.

Not at all... I am not always the best at communicating my thoughts. I wasn't trying to suggest that the tree could be turned into an instant bonsai. Rather if you embraced development in a different direction, it would give you clarity in terms of growing out the tree, developing refinement while growing sacrifice branches, etc. Sometimes it is that initial vision that is difficult to establish in our minds - but once there it is more of a question of development skills than design vision.

 

[Forsoothe!]

As long as we need ideas to beat up on, here's the ~standard~ student body left...

 

[Matt B]

What witchcraft is this?!? Tell me how these sorcerers have created virts that look as if they were reality, with my own pot (as wrong as the pot is for the application)? Is this the secret weapon that I can use to stimulate my miserable creative talent?

Nut, as much as I dislike the ubiquitous Juni cascades, the trunks sure lend themselves to a partial cascade as in your stunning virt. Maybe if I cleaned up the middle of the flat top and organized some clouds there and in the right trunk... Who knows.

Forsoothe, it looks so festive! Like a set of Micky Mouse ears or fireworks. It has character, even with fairly straight branches, which normally signifies a lack of character. Something about the repeated curls of foliage.

Now I must know what programs you are using for these virts.

 

[Forsoothe!]

What witchcraft is this?!? Tell me how these sorcerers have created virts that look as if they were reality, with my own pot (as wrong as the pot is for the application)? Is this the secret weapon that I can use to stimulate my miserable creative talent?

Nut, as much as I dislike the ubiquitous Juni cascades, the trunks sure lend themselves to a partial cascade as in your stunning virt. Maybe if I cleaned up the middle of the flat top and organized some clouds there and in the right trunk... Who knows.

Forsoothe, it looks so festive! Like a set of Micky Mouse ears or fireworks. It has character, even with fairly straight branches, which normally signifies a lack of character. Something about the repeated curls of foliage.

Now I must know what programs you are using for these virts.

I'm old and and my software is old, too. It's older than some of you out there in the virtual world. Corel Photo House, 1998, version 1.10.072. Creating 2 dimensional virts is cut & paste using several files. What you see is file Matt B 6, a 12th daughter file. To make a right-hand turn, you need to rotate a daughter file ~5 or ~10°, copy a "v" portion of the existing branch, paste it on another daughter file with that section erased, and continue with the rest of the branch, each subsequent portion from a daughter file rotated some additional degrees, and to the working file. You have to save each file when you complete a step or your program will crash. It takes a lot of RAM to hold all these pixels in space and when you exceed available space you lose everything. So, move, save, move save, ad infinitum.

Basically, it's time consuming but nothing to it. To fill in foliage, or wood, or anything, you clone from one daughter file and paste to the working file. You need to re-position the clone tool many times so as to avoid creating a pattern, making a paisley which the eye catches immediately. Nothing to it, copy, save, ad infinitum. A lot easier than back in the old days when I ran a computer at Fisher Body in 1967 that was bigger than your kitchen and cost more than your house. I gave up my computer job to go into plastics...