bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - What would you do with this Mugo?

Picture #2 shows you what you should be concentrating on. At this point you, and many others are looking at all of that humongous top and thinking how can I make a bonsai out of that? You need to be concentrating on the structure of the base and considering ways of getting the tree to bud back down lower so that you can utilize a beautiful base structure.

You could start now by cutting back some of the upper branches to points where there is still a good deal of active growth. This should encourage some back budding. Resist the advise to remove old needles, a practice used with Black Pines but not so good with Mugos that need back budding. Back budding is more predictable when there are needles on the branches.

A hard lesson I learned a number of years ago is that Mugos do not well tolerate their roots being disturbed more than once every three years. Resist the urge to repot it once more unless we are talking about slip potting one container to another without root disturbance.

I personally see a very strong base and two trunks coming off that base. Everything else should be removed off the base. When you are done with this tree you should have something about 24" tall so you can see you are going to have to work on back budding. One caution about back budding. The buds we hope to encourage will be lentiginous buds from under the bark. If you notice the little bumps on the trunk these are areas where there were once needles. These locations will also be the places where new growth will develop. This new growth, when and if it occurs, will be very fragile for at least two years and easily broken off.

In essence I am telling you that if this tree were mine I would be regrowing the tree and basically forgetting about all that growth on top other than ways to reduce it. Do not take off more than 30% of the top at any one time.

Bottom line: The base is well worth working with and will make an excellent bonsai one day, in about ten years. If this does not fit your time schedule then you can always go out and buy some expensive pre-bonsai or finished bonsai. At this point even a collected tree is going to take ten years. Would I work on this tree? Absolutely. If I found this tree today in nursery I would buy it. I like doing my own work not working over some other artist/grower's work.

Below is an example of a similar tree I started working on in 06 Father's day about June 20. The tree started out about six foot tall but had a good stump, it ended up as you see in the accompaning photo which is not a good photo but should give you an idea how I think. I will update this picture sometime this week as I have started some detail work this spring.