Bonsai Tonight

An educational website about bonsai development

Ebihara Technique

by

It’s summer and everything’s growing gangbusters so I thought I’d mix things up a bit and write a few more posts about my trip to Japan this past February.

These photos were taken in Ebihara’s garden and provide clues to how he achieved such great results in so little time. I’ll leave the details to your imagination.

Step 1

Step 1

Step 1 detail

Step 1 detail

Step 2

Step 2

Success!

Success!

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Comments

  1. Whoah. What’s going on here? Mr. Ebihara uses “branch-transplants” from a pretty good Japanese maple (a technique described in an earlier Bonsai Focus edition) to enhance a better Japanese maple? That’s simply fascinating! Could it be that mr. Ebihara is some sort of Kimura among deciduous trees masters?

    Now I can hardly wait for your follow-up posts with other details and other nifty techniques from Japan…

    Anyway, keep up the good work! Although this blog is already mý favourite bonsai-blog 😉

    Kind regards from the Netherlands,

    Ferry

  2. Hi Jonas,

    So I get that he is thread grafting branches off one tree, then approach grafting (?) them onto a second tree, but I really don’t understand why. Both trees look pretty well developed, is it like Ferry suggested and that the second tree has a much better nebari so its development is sped up by moving already developed branches to it? It also looked like he was taking somewhat leggy branches, and doing the thread graft in a place that will push the tertiary branches in tighter. All in all its amazing to see, but now I want background on the why’s of it.

    Cheers
    Alex

    • “Speed” was the one tidbit Mr. Ebihara offered – why start with a “thread” when you can grab a whole branch? I don’t know why the source trees’ branches are so expendable.

  4. superb….is it possible to use this technique to all bonsai species?
    or for decidous tree/certain species only?

    anyway it’s make me more interested to the bonsai world

    thanks for sharing

    • Would that it were! As you suggest, it’s not likely that this would work with conifers. I imagine it would work with a few varieties of deciduous trees, but I’ve only seen the technique applied to maples. I wonder if the technique could be applied to tropical trees – it would be fun to see it if it were!