I have some field maples in the neighborhood near my house that have crispy maturing samaras ... might have to grab a handful!
Current batches of future forests (most are year 2 or year 3 in large flats spaced evenly to focus on thickening, not composition yet):
- American Larch (40-50, finishing year 2 of growth)
- Dawn Redwood (20-25, getting thick and ready to design next year)
- American hornbeam (30 ish)
- English oak (20 ish)
- Ginkgo (9-10, might stick with individual trees to grow on)
- Amur Maple (13-14 in smaller groups and will be put together in spring 2024, varying thickness)
- Japanese Maple (composed two forests, but all are same size on year 2, two flats of 20+)
- Japanese Maple clumps (Bjorn technique, 5 separate plantings of 8-9 trees each to fuse together)
I watched Greenwood Bonsai video on Youtube of a forest arrangement this weekend, it's a fantastic instructional video. I like his approach of using organic/peat type soil to wedge the trees in initially versus creating a wire grid.
