I'm not sure, but I'll ask the next time I'm out there.
It was a beautiful day to work on trees today at the garden. To start the session off, I did a bit of carving on one of the trees in the giant trident forest.
The tree in the first picture is a very old Chinese elm, and a huge trident christened "The Southern Waitress" by Kathy Shaner, is in the second picture. And yes, we had fun. I probably laugh more during my 6-7 hour stint there every other month then I do for the following week after. I primarily work on my trees solo, but it's fun getting together with other like minded people to hack on other people's trees.
I don't get out to this garden as often as I like, but when I do, it's always a great time. The group worked on many trees today, mainly junipers, with lot's of thinning and wiring. This tree, which I initially styled 3 years ago, got thinned again in preparation for more wire next month.I spent another great day at the garden today. Lots of new trees were added to the collection, and most of the new ones are bursting with new growth. I didn't arrive at the garden until after lunch due to my son's lacrosse game (a loss). When I got there, Rodney took me over to where this juniper was sitting on the shelf and told me to do something with it or it might need to get culled (auctioned off to make room for the better trees). The first pictures show the tree before working on it. It's typical of lots of the older material in the garden: nice trunks but too many straight branches that need wiring or foliage only out on the ends. After an hour or two of pruning and wiring, this is what we had. I worked on it for another hour tweaking the wiring and thinning out the pads more completely. Rodney told me later that it was definitely making the cut now
I spent most of the day working a very old bunjin juniper new to the collection. It's got a fantastic deadwood trunk with wonderful movement and several live veins that twist up the trunk. The bark and deadwood were cleaned and the horribly overgrown canopy had about 70% of it's foliage removed. The main branches and many of the secondary branches were wired and placed in position. More branches and foliage will be removed in the future but the plan for now is to let it bud back in the interior first and prune back to tighten things up.
Another beautiful day spent working on the garden trees. I did some thinning and fine wiring on the juniper from the last installment... no pics this time but looking good and growing well. Unfortunately, much of the afternoon was spent preparing the collection for Irma, who's due to get up here Monday. Smaller, lighter trees went on the ground. The heavier trees stayed on the bench but were tied down. I'll be spending much of tomorrow doing the same in my yard. Fingers crossed...
Yes, the quality of the trees has improved dramatically in recent years. The water elm and hawthorn re-potted yesterday were both from Gary Marchal's personal collection and are really special trees. Still, hanging out with Rodney Clemons and the rest of the bonsai study group at the Gardens is why I really go... so much fun!
Yeah, we'd like to see it in a different pot, too. We scoured the storage room looking for an oval that would fit it, but the only one large enough, a nice old unglazed brown oval, was cracked. So, it went back into the mica rectangle, which fits the tree well. You can bet Rodney will be on the look out for a better pot to have handy at the next re-pot... donations are welcome!
