Juniperus chinensis "stricta" #3

[defra]

This is the third stricta that i try, the second i gave away couple years ago and the first one died sadly but shit happens i know they are not the best suitable juniper species for bonsai and you dont see many of them anywhere realy..
still i enjoyed working on the ones i had so i picked up this one in the garden center for 6 euro on christmass tree's clearance to play around with and give it another go

so i took it out of the pot to inspect the roots and to remove a little top soil to see if i see anything like a root base but i now regret doing that because it was planted in some sort of sand type of soil and it was not rootbound enough to hold everything together so most soil instantly fell off the roots when i pulled it out of the pot... all it took was a couple shakes with the tree and all the soil was from the roots.
now this was not planned but since that happened i grabbed a trainings pot and planted it up with my soil mix without pruning or touching the roots except for removing the sandy soil, highly from ideal but ill keep it frost free rest of winter and pray it will survive because after all of that i went on and cleaned out the tree and gave it a first styling !

the tree as i bought it, the typical cone shape, since i already worked on these before i know i was gonna find multiple slim trunks in there that form this cone shape


And i was right after i cleaned out the dead interior growth the multiple trunks apeared like i expected.
next step was looking on what "trunks" to keep and what was obvious to remove:



I kept an uneven number of 5 trunks and with different diameters.

 

[defra]

the next day i started on thinking of how to shape this and the only obveous way for me was a multitrunk sort of style tree and use an uneven number of trunks
i started thinning out the tree some more and shortened each trunk at a different hight starting with the thickest as highest one and the thinner the lower cut back.
when that was done i started selecting branches i wanted to keep removed the unwanted ones, made a few small jins at the bottom and wired out the remaining branches and came up with this as result for a first styling.
i only wired the primary branches for now and will let the tree be and hopefully in spring this one starts growing all around i did quite extensive work on it in one go so we shall see what happens.
First styling result :





and a 360 video:

 

[Kodama]

Nice progression so far. I hope it recovers smoothly, keep us updated. Thank you for sharing!

 

[Michael P]

Really good results from unpromising material! Is this the same cultivar as the one sold as 'Blue Point' in the USA?

 

[defra]

Really good results from unpromising material! Is this the same cultivar as the one sold as 'Blue Point' in the USA?

Thnx!
I did a search on google, the blue point juniper shown on the site from monrovia looks verry similar so it might be the same yes.

 

[defra]

Thnx!
I did a search on google, the blue point juniper shown on the site from monrovia looks verry similar so it might be the same yes.

but on looking further i see also blue point juniper with scale type foliage... so now i am unsure haha

 

[Michael P]

Thanks for checking. Here in the states nurseries use trade names for everything, and often different trade names are used for the same cultivar or species depending on who grows it--the evils of marketing.