This month’s Bay Island Bonsai meeting featured a critique by Akio Kondo. Members brought the trees and Kondo provided guidance about topics ranging from care, to styling to display. Here are some highlights from the event. Western juniper Kondo appreciated the thinness of the two trunks, and liked that the shorter trunk was thinner than […]
Search Results for: pine
Juniper deadwood at Elandan Gardens
The bonsai at Elandan Gardens are displayed against the attractive backdrop of Puget Sound and the fantastical background of the gardens themselves. Dan Robinson has adorned the reclaimed land with stones, trees, and even deadwood collected from the mountains in an effort to create an experience that evokes alpine beauty. It’s a great spot to […]
Stroll through Elandan Gardens
You just don’t know what you’re going to see next at Dan Robinson’s Elandan Gardens, in Bremerton, WA, but you can bet it’s been around a while. Or, at least it will look that way. The Japanese larch below is younger than I am, grown from seed since 1974. Robinson planted this tree on a lava […]
Defoliating a Korean hornbeam – part 2
On May 6, 2012, I defoliated my Korean hornbeam. Here is what it looked like after removing the leaves. Defoliated – May 6 (the few leaves in back belong to an escape branch) One of my main goals for defoliating the tree was to expose the interior buds to more light (see Decandling a Korean […]
Decandling projects
In my ongoing effort to develop interior buds on two of my black pines, I tried decandling them in fall almost two years ago. I decandled them again last year, and to really push these trees, I cut them back heavily after decandling. The result has been very vigorous growth and a number of new […]