It's Alright To Change Your Mind
A Restyle After Five Years Work
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.
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