New Maple Forest - opinions?

mintastic

any suggestions would be nice
japanese maple forest

does it need more folliage?

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-william

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Carl_Bergstrom

Good start - you did a good job at getting a lot of trees into the pot. A few suggestions:

1) You've got a lot of crossing trunks - typically folks try to keep these to a minimum when designing forest plantings, because it just looks better, and because there are relatively few crossing trunks in real forests.

2) The trees are all about the same size, and the pot is completely filled with trees. Consider creating some open space in your next forest planting, and try using trees of different sizes (and ages, if possible) to create a sense of perspective (and a pleasing form) to the composition. You could put smaller trees in the back and at the sides, for example.

3) Look at a lot of forest plantings, in pictures on the internet, in magazines, or in books. Better yet, find one of the books that goes into a lot of detail on this. Peter Adams' recent Bonsai Landscapes does, as does John Naka's Bonsai Techniques.

4) These look like year-old seedlings to me. You might want to try working with trees that are at least a couple of years older, if you can find ones to use.

Oh - and let us know how your forest comes along. I'd love to see a picture of it in full fall color later on this year.

Best regards,
Old Mister Crow

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Jose_Alberto

I would suggest for the forest, a leaf reducing defoliation, whenever the weather gets fine for that

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Jose Alberto Franco
Guatemala
Central America
http://www.doschivos.com

Carl_Bergstrom

Defoliating this forest is - plain and simple - a bad idea.

Defoliation is appropriate for the kind of older material that BonsaiAl posted recently, but not for such a new planting. It's stressful on the tree, for one thing. The forest is too young - you can't safely defoliage seedlings. But more to the point, what this forest needs is time to grow and develop treelike shape and structure. Defoliation would only slow down that process.

With young material like this, much better to let it establish a firm root base (first year after replanting), whip out to several feet tall (second or third year), cut back the whips and repot (third to fourth year) and repeat.

To head off the usual outcries, please note that this is not a flame - it's just me disagreeing with bad advice, nothing more, nothing less.

-Old Mister

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Jay

OMC.... no 'Flame' heard! You are expressing an opinion. You are attempting to try and make sure that the info getting out is correct. When you see something you believe to be 'bad' info it is your responsibility to correct it!

As for this 'flame' thing. ENOUGH!!!! I hope all advise given here on this forum is done with good intention. Yes it would be best to do in a nice way..... but as Al has said and implied in other posts, it is better to be negative about a picture when it requires it! To let someone alone to think what they have is great (if it is not) is a dis-service to them. If they want to learn, they will take the advise and think about it. If all they want is for us to say "WOW WHAT A WONDERFUL TREE" they have the not found the right place! Perhaps my skin is a bit thicker than others..... perhaps Northeasterners are able to take criticism better, I don't think so. I think we all want to hear the truth.... in a nice polite way!

This forrest is a beginning, it will need to be reworked as mentioned above. It will need to go into a shallower pot eventually...... and it probably looks about how a forrest would have looked if I put it together myself two or three years ago....

Keep us posted on it's progress

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