Juniper styling help

pwk5017

Hello everyone, my girlfriend got me this juniper "pre-bonsai" as a birthday present and i am at a loss with what to do with it. Im not used to dealing with such an out of control plant. Any advice on possible styling moves would be much appreciated!

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gregb

Blame it on the girlfriend It isn't so out of control for raw material. You have acquired a juniper in winter; don't think it is an indoor tree. You will have to keep it indoors this first winter but when threat of frost is over PUT IT OUTSIDE. For now, place it in a sunny window away from any heaters or warm blowing air. Water the tree when the soil on the surace feels dry. Water it from overhead with a hand mister until water comes out of the drainholes in the bottom of the pot.

You need to learn to keep the thing alive in a pot before you advance to any further stages. I would suggest finding a book about bonsai @ the library or a good bookstore. The species you have is Juniperus procumbens "nana" a very common tree for the beginning bonsaiist. They are tough and can take a lot of abuse but they will eventually lose vigor and die if kept indoors indefinitely.

BTW it's a nice little tree...your girlfriend must like you pretty well

pwk5017

hahahaha yes she does. im sorry i must have mislead everyone, i have been involved with bonsai for about 4 years now, but lack a lot of hands on training so its hard for me to understand shaping trees from step one. ive had it for about a month and a half and it seems to be thriving in my dorm room oddly enough. i had my doubts with it in the room, but i mist it 2-3 times a day and keep it semi moist because from experience junipers shouldnt be kept soaked. My main concern is that giant branch. It just has me at a loss. thanks for the response though and sorry for the confusion!

eeiko321

since it looks like a mallsai..

did u check if it was alive? i had an expeerience liek this not long ago......

ive seen a juniper hold its greeness for MONTHS after it was already dead.

pwk5017

Hmm the tree is incredibly flexible so that leads me to believe its doing well enough. That super long branch just has me stumped.

lehket

One of the more experienced members of my club says that his first step is to "clean up" a tree, that is, remove anything that obviously doesn't have a future so you can better see what's left. He takes off growth from the underside of branches, growth that is overcrowding the spaces between adjacent branches, etc. Mostly he is only removing the small stuff in this step. Then he sits back and examines what's left to determine his design.

Of course. that's his way of working. It may not be yours. Myself, I have a more wholistic approach. I tend to look at the tree for a bit to get some ideas, and if while looking I see something that I'm very sure won't be of value, I'll take it off. But I may then bend something around to try positions, tip the pot, take off some more unnecessary growth, wire a key branch, etc. I tend to work from bottom to top, but not always strictly.

In the case of your tree, I see one thing that seems fairly obvious right off the bat: you could do a cascade with the long branch. You might try playing with that whenever you get ready to do some work on it. But that's just one idea. There may be other directions to go, too.

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