This blue rug juniper that I bought in April 2016 was one of my first trees. I think if I saw this tree today I would pass it up, so I'm not sure what I saw at the time.
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May 2017:After some basic pruning in 2016 the tree looked like this. At this point I had lost a lot of interest in this tree and considered throwing it away. I couldn't see a design in it and all the branches were basically on the same plane.
Shortly after I said "fuck it" and decided to do something hard to challenge me. I decided on a raft. So I cut off more branches, repotted the tree at a different angle into a chopped up 5 gallon bucket and got this.
Yikes. this was probably the second tree I wired, not so good. Today, I would say I needed to fully wire and style it with an idea in mind. I hadn't found Mirai videos yet either, those helped me a lot.
May 2018: Another round of pruning and wiring, didn't get a picture of the wiring after but it was much better than the first time. I put some good movement into the trunks mostly. Unfortunately the far left trunk died off, leaving me with an even number of trunks.
Here it is on my bench this sping, April 2019.
This is it today, Sept 19, 2019. I decided to challenge myself even more and go for a windswept raft. I left a lot of the roots above ground after changing the potting angle, so now I want it to look like it got blown over but still survived. I fully wired the tree using only copper for the first time, and I think it turned out pretty well.
I'm really hoping that all the foliage growing in the same direction for the next couple years pulls this tree together. I plan to let it rest for the next year and see what it looks like after that so I can start thinking about putting it into an actual pot. The even number of trunks doesn't seem distracting on this tree so I'm leaving it for now. I will most likely add deadwood to one or three of these to make it a little odder.
Critiques welcome!
I
May 2017:After some basic pruning in 2016 the tree looked like this. At this point I had lost a lot of interest in this tree and considered throwing it away. I couldn't see a design in it and all the branches were basically on the same plane.
Shortly after I said "fuck it" and decided to do something hard to challenge me. I decided on a raft. So I cut off more branches, repotted the tree at a different angle into a chopped up 5 gallon bucket and got this.
Yikes. this was probably the second tree I wired, not so good. Today, I would say I needed to fully wire and style it with an idea in mind. I hadn't found Mirai videos yet either, those helped me a lot.
May 2018: Another round of pruning and wiring, didn't get a picture of the wiring after but it was much better than the first time. I put some good movement into the trunks mostly. Unfortunately the far left trunk died off, leaving me with an even number of trunks.
Here it is on my bench this sping, April 2019.
This is it today, Sept 19, 2019. I decided to challenge myself even more and go for a windswept raft. I left a lot of the roots above ground after changing the potting angle, so now I want it to look like it got blown over but still survived. I fully wired the tree using only copper for the first time, and I think it turned out pretty well.
I'm really hoping that all the foliage growing in the same direction for the next couple years pulls this tree together. I plan to let it rest for the next year and see what it looks like after that so I can start thinking about putting it into an actual pot. The even number of trunks doesn't seem distracting on this tree so I'm leaving it for now. I will most likely add deadwood to one or three of these to make it a little odder.
Critiques welcome!
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