Post Contest Mosh Pit (enter At Your Own Risk)

bonsaial1

These were the words used for the contest summary. I think they were clear, concise, and to the point. Let's review some of the finer points of styling bonsai from a nursery container.

These points will be based on the ability of me having a very long growing season, and therefore having huge blocks of stock in the nursery's as soon as the last weekend of Feb. If you have a short growing season or nurserys have poor choices to choose from, so be it.

The Hunt The idea was to pick the best stock available for your 20.00 bucks.

How many reviewed all the stock in the nursery of the given plant you chose?
How many knew what they were going to do with the plant when they took it from the purchase point?
Did you utilize all the potential that you saw at the nursery?
Did you put the plant on the table at home and turn it about 50 times trying to find a front or something to style from?

If you answered any two of these yes, you were doomed from the start. The whole idea was to put forth all the things you have learned from the forum and put those ideas in motion in picking out the stock.

Did you choose something that had some great trunk line or branching? Did it have gobs of foliage to help in picking out the branches that would maximize the material?

The Design Being this was contest, I was surprised at the diversity of the stock.
Some chose deciduous and some chose conifers. I would think to maximize the judges decision, there would have been much more utilization of dead wood, jins and shari's. I felt the trees would be shown in much more complex styles to help sway the judging in their direction. I did use some drastic techniques on the tree that I styled and payed the price for it with some dead branches above the shari. But... I needed only one photo to post for the contest and that is what I went for. The tree has responded well to the loss and I have new branches that will take their place, and the tree may even look better!

I was totaly amazed at the almost complete lack of the use of wire. Some of the designs were very interesting, yet somehow missed with the forum voting due in part to the untidy look of the foliage. The branches were styled in the correct way, but the foliage is just sort of hanging down all over the place and no order was introduced to make it look stylized.
I wonder if all those that did not use wire might actually wire the tree and repost them in this thread. I for one would like to see them more complete and see where they might have been in the outcome.

In fact in might be nice to repost all the trees that were in the contest, just to see where they are now.

My Opinion ..for what thats worth, is that in general the contest went well. I would have liked to had more enter, and more votes. Though.. we got the job done.

My opinion goes out like this.. The winner Treebeard. This was an excellent choice. I had told Treebeard that he had the best tree very early on, and that if I were voting I would have picked his too. One thing I missed though. In the smaller pic that he entered I did not see the tiny branch along the right side of the trunk and then bent out sharply to hide a hole in the canopy. When he posted the later, larger pic it showed huge. This may be a fault, I don't know, but I think it detracts from the design. I have seen this done on many trees, but it is usually done with a branch from the back and is not noticable from the front. If he decides to keep this plant, that may have to be repaired if it lives, it looks bent very hard.

The tree with the most potential in the long haul, was the boxwood of David Chauvin. The tree has great proportions and will fill out with foliage and become a great tree in about 5 years. Just too slow for a 90 day styling contest. We all know what an artist David is, and the small vote count does not do his work justice.

OMC's tree has great potential for the long haul too. The trunk has the good twists and turns that will add interest to the plant years from now. I just think it was pruned back a little hard for the contest and should have used some of the great foliage and been detailed wired for looks. I know that those branches were longer then that and could have added some dimension and proportion to the tree. As it was it was just too narrow.

I thought Jay's entry was imaginative. I liked the overall impression he was trying to make, and I think he would have nailed that impression with some detail wiring! Care to give it a try Jay?

Overall I saw some plants that were large and full of foliage, and when done with the pruning they were takin back to a few small remnents of branching and nothing to work with. Less is more, but in some cases less is not enough! More care and thought has to be taken before the first cuts are made. The tree should be sketched on paper, and the branches to be removed should be marked with tape, and then blocked out with a sheet of paper.
Sketching a plant on paper can be the single most important thing you do in tree design.

I would like to hear some other comments about how the trees were done.

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Treebeard

Al, I don't think I understand the question... but...

How many reviewed all the stock in the nursery of the given plant you chose?

... I closely inspected every picea to find the best one (ask my wife, she managed several cups of tea in the cafe while I was doing it...)

How many knew what they were going to do with the plant when they took it from the purchase point?

and I knew what I was planning before I had paid.

Did you utilize all the potential that you saw at the nursery?

I think I utilised the potential.

Did you put the plant on the table at home and turn it about 50 times trying to find a front or something to style from?

No. I already had in mind the front and how to proceed.

If you answered any two of these yes, you were doomed from the start.

I'm doomed then!

Tricks of the trade! Well, I, like you, needed one good picture. If the branch died, I would have revealed the fact before final judging. As it happens, it lived, and has new buds all over it. There are new buds bursting from the trunk. Hopefully, one will emerge from the right place to enable me to alter things. If not, then I am sure I can live with it the way it is. It may even look better without it altogether...

I was also amazed at the general lack of wire. I used lots on mine, and in retrospect I could have used more.

Regards,

TB

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"Do not be hasty, that is my motto"
-JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers.
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Jay

Al, interesting take.... and as far as my tree goes...You nailed it!

I admit totally that my skill with wire is at best poor. I will wire this tree, yes it is still alive and doing well, and get a picture up in a couple of days (or weeks as the case may be).

I should be doing more wire work then I do. I get worried that I will not do it right or that I will kill a branch or that I will...... you get the picture. Sooooo, I do little wire work. By doing little wire work I do not improve and neither do some of my trees. I vow to try and correct this fault!

Jay

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Carl_Bergstrom

Well, I'll start with my tree.


How many reviewed all the stock in the nursery of the given plant you chose?

Yes

How many knew what they were going to do with the plant when they took it from the purchase point?

I thought so - but I actually changed the design somewhat.


Did you utilize all the potential that you saw at the nursery?

I prefer the design I ended up with to what I was envisioning at the nursery.

Did you put the plant on the table at home and turn it about 50 times trying to find a front or something to style from?

Yes.

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I ran into a number of problems in the course of styling my tree. The biggest is that I took off too much and/or was working with too young of material - the point being that all branches remaining on the tree were at most one year old, and most of it was this year's. As a consequence, detail wiring was a serious pain, and the tree lacked the sort of open spaces at the base of branches that characterize both Al's and Treebeard's entries. These are crucial to the illusion of age. I also ended up losing about 10% of the foliage because wiring very fresh shoots can damage them if your wiring skill is no greater than mine.

The wiring job was crappy to say the least. In retrospect, I'm embarassed, looking at the photo of those unkempt wires coiling aimlessly around the trunk. The wire around several branches were not anchored well, making matters worse. I'm getting better at this, though, and if we have a contest again next year I think I can handle this part of the process much better.

The apex was particularly tricky for me. I didn't want a spikey christmas tree apex because this indicates youth, and yet I couldn't find an elegant way to round it out. I ended up wiring a new shoot into a kink for the apex, which doesn't look all that hot in my opinion, not that this matters, seeing as that was one of the 10% that died on me. I've since brought up a new branch for the replacement apex, but I still haven't figured out how to solve the basic styling problem.

On the positive side, I consider the best thing about the tree to be the same thing that Walter pointed out - the proportions. The branches are in good places, the movement is interesting, and the trunk segments shorten at you move upward in attractive ratios. The top view shows an even distribution of branches around the entire tree.

With respect to the other finalist trees, I think Walter nailed it. Little for me to add there!

All the best,
Carl

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

I should point out that this was my second effort at styling a contest tree. My first was a windswept (just to be different - I think the style is tricky and I've got to admit I'd never done a successful one) came out nicely, I thought, but then my dog ate it seconds after I finished the detail wiring! Seriously.

I've attached a picture of the post-chewed tree. Note that several jin and two major branches are already missing. I don't have a photo pre-chewed. It is, among other things, (1) too tall, (2) overpotted in an inappropriate (but handy) pot, and (3) placed improperly in the pot. The first was just my mistake, though it wasn't as bad when I had the longer branches. I felt that the last two were necessary to avoid losing more of the tree than had already ended up inside of the dog.

Best regards,
Carl

Attached Images

procumbens1_first_styling_small.jpg (26.5 KB, 190 views)

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In love with trees

Treebeard

In a old thread, Bonsaial1 askedWell, here you go.

I agree with Walter's assesment. Less looks better. I was also bothered by there being too many different angles coming off the trunk. I have altered the angle of the branch to the right, and removed some others.

Now who will virtual mine for me?

Regards,

TB

Attached Images

contestafter1 copy.jpg (57.0 KB, 148 views)

__________________
"Do not be hasty, that is my motto"
-JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers.
-----------------------------------
christopherguise.co.uk

David Chauvin

How many reviewed all the stock in the nursery of the given plant you chose?

No. I was in Home Depot and decided to see what was in stock. I picked up the first boxwood on the end of the pile and it looked promising, so I set it aside. After looking at another twenty or so (out of maybe fifty), the first one looked to be by far the best with lots of small branching, so it came home.

How many knew what they were going to do with the plant when they took it from the purchase point?

Basically, yes. I had been pruning dwarf chickasaw crape myrtles for a couple of days (these were great little trees but $5 over the limit) and I decided to treat the boxwood the same way, to clip and grow a sillouette tree with all new reduced foliage.

Did you utilize all the potential that you saw at the nursery?


Maybe. The problem roots cannot be improved until repotting, but I'm pretty much satisfied with the branch selection and overall proportions. No wiring was done because I didn't have much to wire in the end.

Did you put the plant on the table at home and turn it about 50 times trying to find a front or something to style from?

Yes, but there was only one possible front, with slight variations. The back is pretty interesting, but a bit suggestive and may not be suitable for general viewing.

Opinions- I think the contest went well, but more entries would have been nice. It's odd that more trees weren't entered considering the excellent first prize being offered. I think Mountain and Carmi had trees with great potential that would have been in contention with some wiring.

David

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Treebeard

OMC, you're windswept looks very good. Al, send the stand to Carl's dog!

Perhaps reduce the top-most branch by 2 thirds, or jin the whole thing.. (the whole branch, not the whole tree!)

Regards,

TB

__________________
"Do not be hasty, that is my motto"
-JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers.
-----------------------------------
christopherguise.co.uk

TreeBay

Can you photograph the first branch from the bottom or the top?

It's hard to tell, but I think I would be tempted to wire that first branch up to form the tree, and cut the rest off. The finished silhouette looks cool from the front, but most of the primary branches are carried on the back.

Regards,

Matt

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