Over the last few weeks we have had some interest in our juniper mountain scene rock planting that we have here at Bonsai-En and there have been a lot of questions about it. We just released a YouTube video on that which you can watch below if you have not seen it yet.
There have been a few people who have wanted to know the process of this tree and see some photos of its progress.
This tree first started as a juniper starter plant in an 8" nursery container, As it grew it had a real long and lanky trunk structure which could have been easily fixed but i saw an opportunity to use this to my advantage. I grabbed the rock that i had gotten from some friends of mine and had sitting around for a few months wondering what to do with it, i took it over to the tree and sized it up. There was an issue already, The bottom of the rock was wider then the 8" pot the tree was in. The first step now was to take the tree out of the 8" pot and plant it into a 10" pot so i could fit the rock in with the tree. In this process i also moved some roots around to allow some space for the rock under the soil.
The photo below shows the tree a few months after being planted on the rock in its very young form.
The next step for this tree was to just let it grow so i had some material to work with later, I didn't touch the tree again for another year. Once that time had rolled by the tree had a bit more foliage and a few branches that i could now set some structure on and start to plan out what would go where.
The photo below shows the tree after its first main structure setting around a year later.
Once again after this structure wiring was done the tree was allowed to continue to grow and thicken up and give me more material to work with in the next season.
Fast forward another year and we have the photo below which shows the tree after it was allowed to grow out untouched.
This photo was taken in at the end of spring early summer of this growing season ( we are going into winter now ).
And now finally the photo below shows the tree as it is right now, it had a second round of styling to help create some shape to the individual trees and to try and stop some of the growth getting out of control and out of proportion to the rock.
As the tree sit now it is still in development so no real styling has been done to the tree, just very fundamental structure work to make sure the tree is heading in the right direction.
What i hope you get out of this article is inspiration that although something does not look like a finished Bonsai in the beginning if you have the right vision and patience you can start something today that will be something beautiful in the future, dont get discouraged because you look at it now and its skinny or has sparse growth, dont be discouraged if someone else has a bigger tree that is more refined. Keep your eye on your own goals and make sure you do all the proper work to achieve your vision.
Until Next Time, Enjoy Your bonsai Journey.
