By Thomas J.

For those of you who are regular readers of my articles, you can probably tell by now that I really get into doing restyles on my trees. It's a good thing to rethink your original styling on some of your trees after they have been growing and maintained for some years, especially if you've become bored with what you now have. This article addresses both of those issues.

I hope you enjoy reading it, and also what I have done with this tree in its new restyle.

In March of 1999, I decided to take a ride to my local source for bonsai material, both pre bonsai and already styled bonsai. I was just going to look of course. Back then I wasn't into the juniper scene yet as I am now. All of my trees then were of the deciduous variety, and my favorite being the chinese elm. Most of my chinese elm stock was of the small size variety, except for one which at the time was my favorite mainly because of its mature size and age.

After a few minutes of browsing, I entered an area where new unpotted stock had just arrived. Wouldn't you know it my browsing came to an end when I spotted the biggest trunked chinese elm I had ever seen. Not the biggest, just the biggest I'd ever seen.

After taking a quick run to the nearest bank, since I was just browsing remember, and got the needed funds, the tree and I were headed back to my place where it would live the rest of its years being pampered by me.

The root system was huge, and the weight of the tree itself was barely enough for me to handle by myself. The tree was still in its black plastic nursery container, and in order for me to pot it up, I would have to find something with both width and depth for this one. The picture below shows the tree after purchase with its new pot. 

These next two pictures show the pot more clearly. Not the greatest choice of pot, but it handled everything the tree had to offer without looking under potted.

From the time I potted the tree up, until just recently, I knew what I would be using for the front, and how I would go about styling it. The pictures below also show what I intended for the front. All I would need is time to help me shape and ramify the branch structure. There's those two words again "branch structure" that I keep harping on in some of my other articles.

These two pictures show the progress of about three and half years, and a much better pot. I must say, that at the time I was pleased with the way the tree was coming out. It seemed to be going right on track with what I had planned.

But this past summer I began wondering if I had chosen the right path for this tree. The size of the trunk and the thickness of the primary branches, should make this tree something to gasp at, and that's not what I or too many others were doing. The chosen front had a nebari that probably should have been covered up rather than exposed, for all practical purposes. In short, I thought the tree had much better potential than I was giving it, and I became really bored and frustrated with it. So much so that I seriously contemplated selling it. I probably wouldn't get what I thought it was worth, and might even lose money on it, not to mention the time and effort spent on it. The picture below was taken immediately before the restyling work began.

After five years of pinching and shaping, I had a pretty ramified branch structure. This restyle would be easy if I could just find the right front and decide the exact shape for it. The pictures below show the back, right
side, and left sides of the tree.

It didn't take long for me to see that the back of the tree would now be the new front. Everything seemed already in place. Not one piece of wire was needed to restyle this tree, just a lot of branch cleaning up by pruning.

The ugly nebari was now unseen, and the curve of the trunk seemed to come alive, along with the nice thick primary branches.

I will now call this tree My New Old Chinese Elm. I hope you like it as much as I do.