Tree Rescue Challenge #1

[rodtheworm]

I was looking at this juniper the other day.

I bought it when I was very new to the idea of bonsai and basically feel I did all the wrong things - cut the small branches and left the big, long ones, and ended up with two excessively long branches in particular.

It has been sitting in a corner of my garden with no attention for a year or two, kept more because I would feel bad just throwing it and wasn't pressed for space than because I particularly wanted to keep it or had any vision for it. It only cost me £4 anyway.



When I looked at it today, though, I thought of Peter Chan of Herons Bonsai, who seems to be able to turn even the most unlikely material into something that looks fantastic.

Your challenge for today is to decide what you would do with this!

Would you radically prune branches from the lower section and begin the tree again from further up?

Air layer off long branches to form mini-cascades?

Scrape the whole trunk and attempt to root it as a raft, or bury it and grow the branches into a forest?

Let me hear your thoughts!

 

[GGB]

If you don't want a long term project ... I'd just dump fertilizer on this and give it as much sun as you can. I don't know what cultivar it is, but if it were a shimpaku it would respond with some back budding. So you'd have a second chance to foster the finer growth closer to the trunk. I think it has great bones for a smaller tree, although the foliage might lend itself to a larger sized tree

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I would remove the second lowest left branch/trunk and wire the rest. There is a tree in there.

 

[Potawatomi13]

Small young tiny tree has plenty branches for great development. First grow BIG trunk.