Rocky Mountain Juniper

schoolpizza

Seedling
Messages
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Location
Mid Atlantic
USDA Zone
7a
I jumped into deep water getting a tree of this quality for the first time.

I think this rocky mountain juniper may have been trained once but hasn't been touched much for several years. First two pics are pretty much the only front options I see, being a very wide and planar tree. I went with the deadwood heavy side.

After examining this tree for a bit I realized it's basically two small literati trees; the live growth is highlighted in pic 3. The foliage is growing way above the branch structure so I thought to bring everything down. I also decided the right trunk needed to be pulled left-down to compact the composition a bit.

Pic 4 is initial wiring, admittedly not looking great yet. I tried to remove as little as possible since these are fairly sparse trees by nature. Pic 5 is my vision for pad development, pushing new growth leftward to flow with the deadwood movement. The T-shirt is covering a long, heavily-foliated branch that I plan to reduce/jin as my other branches gain strength.

Questions:
How does juvenile foliage work? If I prune one area hard will all the tree's foliage revert to juvenile, or does it just go juvenile only where it was directly cut? I already have a lot of needle foliage especially on the left trunk and I want to avoid getting more.

Should I be treating this as one tree or as two regarding my styling? I'm stumbling a bit on decisions that seem to turn on whether I am trying to harmonize one trunk with itself vs. the whole tree.

Is there anything obvious I missed that would help my design or approach here? I really want to maximize the potential of this tree.


Thanks for looking !
 

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BTW, backup plan is something like this, which I think would look wicked but I have way too much respect for the tree to commit to.
 

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I guess if it's not hacked up nursery stock then it's best to share elsewhere.
 
BTW, backup plan is something like this, which I think would look wicked but I have way too much respect for the tree to commit to.
Whatever you do, please don’t do this… way more character and potential with both trunks included in the styling imo. You’ll also lose the main visible live vein that can be seen at ground level
 
Whatever you do, please don’t do this… way more character and potential with both trunks included in the styling imo. You’ll also lose the main visible live vein that can be seen at ground level
Thanks, I tend to agree and it's responding well to wiring so I don't anticipate losing anything.

I'm not the biggest Ryan Neil fan but sort of taking this dual trunk pine of his as a rough guide for this tree..
 

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Thanks, I tend to agree and it's responding well to wiring so I don't anticipate losing anything.

I'm not the biggest Ryan Neil fan but sort of taking this dual trunk pine of his as a rough guide for this tree..
That’s what I see with the material, which is really quite good. Lots to work with.
 
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