I recently picked up an eight year-old black pine growing in an Anderson flat. It had grown in the ground for several years and had been in the flat for the last one to two years. 8 year-old black pine As you can see from the photo above, most of the vigorous growth is located […]
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Refining Korean hornbeam follow-up – thinning branches
I received some fantastic suggestions last week, both in the comments and in my inbox, about how to improve a refined Korean hornbeam. I’ll respond below, but first, here’s the tree as it looked last week for reference. Korean hornbeam A number of you suggested thinning the branches – I agree. I didn’t thin the […]
What next? Refining a Korean hornbeam
Below is a photo of my Korean hornbeam after removing the leaves. Korean hornbeam Although I’ve shown the tree a number of times and it’s been in training for more than 10 years, I’d like to continue to make improvements. Before getting started, I’d love to hear what improvements you would suggest. Feel free to […]
An approach to organizing a bonsai garden
I often spend time organizing the garden toward the end of the year. I’ve found it’s far easier to keep trees healthy when growing similar varieties under similar conditions. For trees in development, I organize by variety, age, and type of pot. For years I grew trees in colanders on the same benches as trees […]
From landscape tree to bonsai part 5
Six years ago, I started working on a large Japanese black pine that had been developed as landscape material. Japanese black pine – 2012 Over the years I reduced the tree to a single cascading branch (for the full story, see links to parts 1-4 below). Black pine – December 2017 Several years ago, the […]