Making Bonsai from Field Grown Juniper

Today is the 5th of March and we've had temperatures of 15 and 16 degrees centigrade and it's virtually spring. Look at the lovely blue skies. The grass has been mowed and I'm going to work on some Bloss Junipers. But before I work on the Bloss Junipers, I will show you how we grow our own Bloss Junipers because we have a field of them. As I've always told people, about 70% of all the bonsai we sell are produced on the nursery. So I'll show you the production. I shouldn't be revealing all these trade secrets to people but there's no harm. I like to share my knowledge. So I'll take you to show you how we grow the Bloss Junipers. So here we are walking through our field, enjoying the lovely sunshine. The object of showing you how they grow in the field is to show you the natural habit of junipers. Because in their natural habit, they grow in an inverted triangle shape. They are not the traditional triangle with a broad base. So here are the field grown junipers. We also grow our own black pine, we grow our shishojo tree. So these shishojo were planted about five years ago and these Bloss Junipers were also planted five years ago. So you can see how big they are. When you see how they are, they are almost waist high. Five years ago they were only like six inches, 15 centimetre high. And in five years they've grown so much. And as I explained to you, the habit is in an inverted triangle. So they all have like multiple trunks but if you wire them you can make beautiful bonsai. So I'm going to dig some of them up in the spring and I'm going to use some for tanukis and I'm going to use some for making conventional bonsai. The purpose of growing them in the ground is to get a thick trunk in a very short space of time. So see these have got multiple trunks and where the rabbits have been nibbling at it, it's made a natural shari there. So I just let them grow as long as the trunks thicken, that's fine. Every tree is different. Some have got single trunks, some have got multiple trunks. But as long as they are not dead, they're okay. Sometimes the trees die, so this tree I think is struggling. And the reason for this is not because of the weeds. I think it is because we spray to control the weeds. We do spray the trees with chemical, spray the grass with chemical. Sometimes we have the rabbits eating the bark. If you look at the tree here from this side, I think it could even be the deer. They strip the bark and they kill the tree. So I have damage from animals. So that is the problem when you grow trees in the field, you have that problem. But can you see all my crop of junipers? So this is how they grow. Unlike how some of the Japanese growers treat their plants, they train their junipers as bonsai from very small. So they wire them into shape when they're small and then grow them big. But I tend to grow these for large material and when the trunks are thick enough, I then deal with them. So I will now go back into the nursery and show you exactly how we deal with these trees which have been grown in the field to become big and then we will style them in bonsai. So the object of growing in the field is to get a thick trunk. So let me show you these Bloss junipers. These were field grown trees from many years back and they were put in these pots three years ago. And I did some rudimentary wiring on them just to get the branches to flatten down. I told you that left to their own devices, the Bloss juniper grows like an inverse triangle, like a bar shape like that. That is the natural habit of all junipers, whether it's because these are all China junipers, they're just different varieties. And if I can remind you, Bloss is in fact a type of juniper from Japan and a Dutchman called Bloss went to Japan, I think in the 18th century, saw the plant and brought it back to Holland and propagated them and it's now been called the Bloss variety. But there's hardly any difference between this and Kisu. If you look at the Kisu, it's exactly like Kisu. I have a Kisu here and if you look at the foliage there, this is Kisu and if you compare the foliage with the Bloss, it is virtually identical. Sometimes if you grow the Bloss in the ground very vigorously, it will get a slightly bluish tinge. That is the only difference between the Bloss and the ordinary Kisu Chinese juniper. So there are different ways of tackling these junipers that we grow in the field. This one, I virtually wired every single branch. I didn't cut any branch off, I just wired them flat to get the configuration like this and then that's the leader and then we will build more canopy there. This is another one. Can you see the beautiful taper on this tree? And this one again, I didn't cut any branch off. Luckily all the branches are there. In fact, the wire's not strong enough. I'll have to take that off and this is going to be a tree like that and look at the trunk. It's over two inches thick there. So they do grow fast. They do grow fast. Now I'm not going to work on that one. I'm going to work on this one. We have scores of these. We love working with these because they make beautiful specimens. Of course, the famous one that I showed at Chelsea in 1984 was done in two years from a Bloss like this. So this is typical of the material that we grow in the field and all the branches are intact. I haven't cut any branch off. So this is how you would get a tree from the field like that. So what do I do with it? Sometimes I look to the longer term so that I get a tree in the long term like this is a long-term project. This one, because I've got so many, I may not break them. Let me see if I can get a more instant effect. These branches at the low level I like to keep because they help to thicken the base. So you get a very nice thickening of the base so they could be treated as sacrificial branches should I not use it in the design. But because the branches are so low, I can see straight away that I can get an almost instantaneous effect. So it's just a question of taking the right choice, what to cut, what to leave and we will end up with a reasonable looking tree. So I can continue to keep these because they will make quite a nice first, primary and secondary branches. These will all be saved for cutting. One can wire as we go along but because I can visualize what I'm going to do, so that is there and this one coming out I don't want that sticking out so I'll keep a little stub in case I want to do a little gin with that. And these are ideal thickness for cutting, heel cutting. That's how we propagate the juniper, like that. That would make an ideal cutting. So I'm going to have hundreds of cuttings. So that is here. Again may I remind you we always prefer thinner branches rather than thick branches to use as the structure and design for the tree. So I can virtually see the end result here. That's coming out at a corner there. I might keep a little stub in case I want to use it for gin. I may not but let me keep the option so I have good spacing of branches there. This fork here is not very useful from the design point of view and also it's like a catapult so that's a problem. So maybe I will cut it off and perhaps use that for gin. But before I do that I better start doing some wiring. So we're going to wire these, wire all these, arrange them in position before I proceed further. So Josh is going to help me. We're going to both wire and we're going to wire it and get the shape and then proceed before we take drastic decisions as to whether we should cut this or not and how much to cut. So we've got up to here. Josh has very kindly wired the lower branches. I didn't want to go further because once the branches have been wired at this level I can then set about seeing the configuration and seeing the potential design I can get out of. So these straight branches I'm going to shorten it by doing a little zigzag. Always a good idea to shorten the branch. The zigzag gives it more interest and character rather than then just dead straight and then this one you can take up and take it this way. If you use the right grade of wire you can achieve virtually any result you wish. I've deliberately kept most of the branches because I'm now going to show you how you decide which branch to keep, which branch to cut off. The decision making process is what frightens most people. I've known people who looked at the tree and kept it for months if not for years not knowing what to cut. So I'm now going to explain to you how we decide. So these, okay let me just put these in place because the wires that have been put on can be used to good effect. Again a zigzag. Now when we come to the back, okay we've got this, we've got this, this is okay. Now there's a cluster of branches here. I've kept it because I wanted to show you how I'm going to decide. I can use these as back branches like that. When these are wired down it'll give me the depth I need for a back branch. These branches are really redundant you must admit. You can keep it as sacrificials to thicken the trunk. Sacrificials are very important. Very few people like to look to the long term but because bonsai is a long-term thing it is worth keeping it simply to help thicken the trunk faster. So we will wire it down to keep it like that but that won't be part of the design of the tree. Now this branch also I don't think somehow you need it but I will keep it just in case. So I've only removed one, two branches so far, just two branches. The big decision now is what to do with that ugly catapult or fork over there. Now most trees if you just cut it in a conical shape you'll get away with it but I think it needs something more than that. The fact that this trunk forks this way and goes that way means it's giving it a slight bend there so it makes it a bit more interesting than going this way so the I think inclination would be to get rid of that although if I just arranged it in triangular shape it could be used but I think we could dispense with it even if I made it go up and come down I don't think it would be that useful. See I'm afraid of having too much gap there. Okay let's take a pretty bold decision and take that off. So we've got to this stage as I said we can keep it it doesn't detract but I don't think I need that. So what I'm going to do is going to take that off and hopefully I can fill the space with this branch. It's so tempting to keep this and bring some lateral branches there. Let me show you well you could take it in stages too. If I take it off in stages like so, I'm going to take that one off first take that one off so if you did that you could fill the space like that with that but if I brought this down that should take care of that. So I want that gone. So I think we will get rid of this and make that into a gin that's if the gin is needed. I'll keep the option because sometimes and tear towards the front because that's where we want the torn wood effect to show. So that's what we're doing we're going to tear it like that. For those who've never seen it done that's what we do. Let me just get another pliers and take it in stages. Sometimes you can use a branch cutter or whatever to tear it back like that and then you can refine it. So that's done there's no going back. So that we will keep it may have to thicken the trunk a little more then these branches are going to be brought right down to fill the space and then we will give a slight twist to the top to give some movement to the top. So we're going to wire the rest and we will show you again this one if it is not needed we may take it off but we'll keep it for now so you can see the progression of the tree. So we're going to keep it if we don't like it we can always remove it but we're now going to wire everything in place. Here we are we've literally only done like one hour's work in wiring so this has all been done in one hour from the decisions to cut off we took off only two branches we took off this branch which was growing here and this branch which was growing there so these two we took off all the others we just shortened this was the gin we pulled down to make the gin and we've virtually used everything these are going to spare sacrificial branches so i wasn't in a rush to take those off and we're just going to manipulate these branches in place this is virtually the rough design so i was worried about this space if i bring this branch down it can fill the space i'm not too worried about that i can even fill the space doing this so that's not a problem i'll keep these just to thicken it and josh has just pointed out look at that beautiful taper broad at the base tapering all the way to the point there taking this out will prevent it from getting inverse taper so that had to come out and now the head is going to be nice and round like that you can do this just arrange the branches and then say presto we've got an instant bonsai made from bronze material which is another form of chinese juniper very similar to the kisu there we go we haven't refined any of the wine but you can see it is virtually a complete tree if we wanted to be pedantic we can shorten some of these branches so that it's not too long but you can see what we have done we're not trying to make an exhibition tree we're just getting the outline so that you can see the future development of the tree that can be flattened a little bit we can even take it off but there you go virtually an instantaneous bonsai and i've shown you some of the decision making processes the way i decide which branches to keep the ones to keep as sacrificials and this will continue to grow it's in quite a deep training pot and by keeping it in a thick deep pot like this it will thicken faster so i hope you've enjoyed this little lesson of how to make gloss juniper these are still coming on they've got some progression to make and this one again i will take some decisions on that but as long as i let it go it's getting a lovely taper there this one i could even take another decision and just have a tall tree with small short branches but most of my customers like a broad tree so when you run a commercial nursery like i do i sometimes have to think what would the customer react what would the customer like so a lot of my decisions are based on whether this tree becomes more saleable commercially so i hope you've learned something from this so there's another juniper