Peter's Bonsai Blog
| Peter's Bonsai Blog |
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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 in Germany in April 2007 |
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Above in April 2007 Above in April 2019 Above inNovermber 2024 Below - This is how the tree looked when first seen in the German Nursery...... |
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and how it looked when it arrived in my garden. |
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It obviously hadn't been repotted for many years and so I removed a phenomenal amount of root growth.
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The tree was initially returned to its original pot, but I felt that it was to big for the tree |
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Fortunately I had an alternative and so after a couple a days It was repotted again.
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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. |
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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 ttree we first saw in 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.
In November 2024 I was fortunate to persuade Caz Scott to come to my garden for private tuition, Caz was able to sprinkle her magic dust over the tree with the following result. - Marvelous!
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