Peter's Bonsai Blog 

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  Above in April 2007

This Chinese Juniper  was purchased from a friend when he decided to give up the hobby in 2019.

I have known this tree since it was purchased by Martin in April 2007 from a specialist bonsai nursery in Germany.

Above in April 2019 

This is how the tree looked when first seen in the German Nursery......

and how it looked when it arrived in my garden.

It obviously hadn't been repotted for many years and so I removed a phenomenal amount of root growth.

 The tree was initially returned to its original pot, but I felt that it was to big for the tree

Fortunately I had an alternative and so after a couple a days It was repotted again.   

Having placed the tree in a smaller pot, I removed the low hanging branch on the left; the foliage was trimmed & thinned out to encourage back budding, and the bark given a coat of camelia oil.  Some of the dead wood at the soil line was rotting badly, and so that got a soaking with Ronseal wood hardener (normally used on rotten window frames). All of the dead wood will now get a coat of lime sulphur.  A few hours work and the tree is looking a lot better, and will now be left to recover for a year while I try and find a better pot for it.

By the summer of 2021, the tree had recovered a bit, but had lost some branches on the 

right hand side.   I guess the root pruning was just to much for it.  

I have no doubt this tree will continue to evolve, but I think it could look quite different from the 

tree we first saw on our trip to Germany in 2007.

By the winter of 2023-24 the top part of the tree had died out and so I decided to remove the foliage on the right hand side.  This produced a much more striking image and the picture below shows the tree being exhibited at the Ayrshire Bonsai Group Winter Image show on 14th January 2024.

Still more work to do on refining the pads I think.