Shaping & Styling a Juniper

Let me show you first of all all these lovely presents that I got. Today is the 15th of March and I was in Holland at Lodder Bonsai with three of my colleagues Josh, Tibor and Tracy and we had a lovely time and so many of my YouTube fans I was privileged to meet and I got some presents and this lovely Monet Hawaiian shirt from one of my YouTube fans who met me in Holland. So thank you very much. So that is going to be the subject of another long video about my visit to Lodder to demonstrate there. So what have I got here today? I wasn't going to do any videos today but I had a customer bring a tree this morning to the nursery. Have a look at it. It's a classic Chinese juniper and the story of Lodder Bonsai is very interesting to share with you. This tree used to be the tree that a 96 year old lady owned until she died last year and she left it with her granddaughter and as is always the case the granddaughter hadn't a clue as to what to do with it. She didn't even know that it's a juniper but suffice it to say that her grandmother had it for maybe about 60 years and I'm not surprised because back in 1961-62 there was a company in the UK called Bromage and Young and they were bringing in junipers like this and they were sold in the 60s one pound per foot. So you had a two foot tree was two pound. Remind you remind you 1962 is almost 60 years ago so in those days money was worth much more than it is now. Anyway so she may have paid like two pounds in those days and remember in 1962 the average wage of most office workers was six pound a week so one third your weekly wage. So this is the story of this tree and this tree has been in the UK since 1962 probably and of course junipers live very long. I've even had white pines that were brought in to the UK in those early years of the 60s and they're still alive. So like most people they do all sorts of things to decorate their nothing. Let's look at what can be done. So this is not what one would imagine a bonsai to be. Projects like this I find very interesting because you are faced with a design problem and you have to find a solution to it. Because it is so gangly and all the tufts at the end, bare branches, it's not a classic s-shape, it's nothing. It's just rocks of long gangly branches. So the obvious solution for most people would be, I think you may have guessed it, make it into a raft to make a forest which is possible. You'll get a forest about one two three that's four about seven trees you can get for making this into a forest but you'll get like a pom-pom type forest and because this person, this granddaughter, wants a tree that looks like a conventional bonsai, making it into a raft or a forest I don't think she would be very happy with. So this therefore stretches my imagination. It is a very challenging project, very very challenging and what can you do with a thing like that? While I'm thinking let me clean the bark a little bit, see what happens. As I say these junipers are very resilient. Juniper is probably easier to look after than the Japanese white pine because they can stand drought better and they're very hardy. So I dare say for most of its latter years while this dear lady was reaching her 90s it was probably not cared for very much and yet it survives. So this tree has got a lot of potential still in it. So with most of these sort of trees or as I always say there's always more than one solution to this problem. So what I look for in a tree like this, I'm literally going to speak my mind. As I'm thinking I'm going to talk my thoughts. So I'm looking at it and I look at the tree and see where can I find a nice trunk line, a trunk that looks curvy and nice which got a lot of bends in it. What is the trunk line that looks nicest? So if I turn it around I can see straight away that this side is not so curvy. If I turn it like this it begins to look more interesting curvy that way and I can get more or less a conical shape. At the moment it's like a umbrella shape like that inverted V. I want to make it a more conventional V. So let's see what I can do. So just by a bit of bending of the branches with strong enough wire I think I can create a better shape. Of course this hasn't been repotted I would dare say for about I think she said maybe about 30 years or more. It's not been repotted so it needs a repot in another pot. So let's see what we can do. So my immediate plan is to try and create a conical shape with this tree. I can see that some branches are bendable so let us try and bend those branches. So let us see with wire what we can do. Possibly even using a branch splitter. What can be achieved with a branch splitter? Creating bonsai is about having vision. Like in anything you've got to have a vision. If you want to start your own business, you want to start your career, you want to do anything in life, you have to have vision. You have to have foresight and a plan as to what you want to achieve. If you don't have vision or you don't have any plan then whatever you do counts for nothing. You have to have vision to see what your end objective is. So my end objective here is to create a triangular looking tree which has a recognizable bonsai shape. Okay so with that in mind I'm going to see if I can bend the branches in a fashion that will create that image or shape. The angle is not too bad. I will keep the angle as it is. I can see straight away that I can open it up like this. Because so many twigs have died on this tree I will show you another thing. If you home in close you see all these burrs and snags. One little tip I give you that if you clean them up it makes the wiring far easier and simpler. If there are snags the wiring becomes more difficult. So always clean the snags up and that will help make your wiring a great deal simpler and easier. I can see that they've pruned some dead branches off. So that's the first thing you should always do with any project that you're embarking on. Of course this is where the wire brush is very useful. This is a brass wire brush is used for cleaning the bark especially on junipers. If you have craggy bark on a pine never do it on a pine because you want to preserve the craggy bark. Okay there's another little stump there. I'm going to take that off. I'm not making a gin with short bits like that. Let me talk a little about wire cutters. This believe it or not is my favorite wire cutter. It's nice and small easy to grip. I lost it the other day and I felt very upset because I wasn't used to using other wire cutters. This is a similar one similar design but for some reason the shape and the size although it's similar it's not as easy to hold as this one. So you get to know which wire cutter you like. These are heavy duty Japanese wire cutters that's for cutting very thick wire you know something like five six ten millimeter thick. So that has a separate purpose. For just general cutting of wire I prefer these little wire cutters. Okay so I'm going to try and create a shape that is more open conical shape. So let us see what we can do. I'm going to always use two branch principle. I'm going to wire that branch and this branch. You see how I'm measuring the length of wire that I need. I'm going to go up to there. A lot of people have asked me how do you know what length of wire to use. I think if you can keep it like about 10% longer than the length of the branches you want to wire that is a very good rule of thumb. The only rules of thumb or guidelines don't take it as gospel. As you work more in trees you will get to know your own way of wiring your own preferences and that will work for you. How tightly you wire and the spacing also determines the length of wire that you use up. So as I always say in everything you do there are no hard and fast rules. Everyone devises their own method which suits their own particular style of working. I hate it when people say you've got to do this you've got to do that. There's nothing got to about it. You do whatever suits you. As long as it works. You see I've judged enough wire to come to the end of this thick branch and from here on where it's thinner I use thinner wire to wire that. So this is a lesson in wiring as well. Now this one again there are some snags still on this branch. You see all these little snags here. I'm going to clean them up make the wiring a bit easier. A lot of these projects it's more the thinking or the brain power that is a problem more so than anything else. The actual technicality of wiring and applying the wire shaping is only secondary. The solution is the key. Key to the problem. We have a problem we have to find a solution. So this is what we're going to do. Again you see I've judged how accurate was I to judge the wire right to the end. I haven't cut any wire off. I hate it when people cut oodles of wire off and then it's thrown into the skip. Look at that not a centimeter wasted. Not a centimeter wasted to the very end. Okay I've applied that piece of wire and for some reason I'm more or less homing in to this as the front. Let me mark the front. Let me mark the front somewhere here. Always better to use two bits of wire to mark it. Then your eye will be guided like so. Two bits of wire like so. Okay now assuming I've used the right thickness it should be able to bend and hold the branch in place. If not I can always put another piece of wire to hold it. So that is the start of the base of the triangle. Because this is such an old tree some of these branches could be 50 years old and there's no thicker than a pencil. So they could be very brittle. If you do hear it crack it does happen. There's this very famous Japanese saying even monkeys fall out of trees. So however clever you are you can still have an accident. Okay now this one comes this way. Now we've got these two are very similar in thickness so I'm going to wire these two. So this is the next thing to do. So you see how my thought process is working. So I want to wire those two. So the length of wire is about that long. I'll just show you how I use that heavy wire cutter. A good pair of wire cutters cuts through the wire like butter. Okay so I'm going to wire these two branches. Okay the two branch principle I give a little anchor and once I've anchored this one and then I proceed to do the other branch in full. I don't ever attempt to wire the whole branch until I've got an anchor. Those of you who are very observant will have realized that the gin pliers I regard as one of my most essential tools. I place it on par with the scissors that I use for snipping branches. It is such a useful tool that I literally can't do without it. I'm forever resorting to the gin pliers to terminate the end of the wire. So let me take it to the thicker branch and we will with the gin pliers again see the length of wire again not a centimeter of wastage. How clever is that Mr Chan? I don't know how I do it but from years of experience I've been able to judge the right amount of wire to use for any particular situation without wasting an inch. Now although it came from the same branch I'm going to make this a second layer different tier and this I'm going to wire into flat pads where I can. So that is going to be the pad formation which I'll get to. So I'm still creating the structure all the time. This dead bit could be a gin I don't know let's see what happens. It could end up as a gin it could end up as a branch. So let me just wire some of these pads to see if the pads will turn out nice. So I'm going to make these into pads. Not only should wire be efficient but it should always do the job that you planned for the tree. So I'm going to see how I can get the maximum leverage or the best connection. Okay I've got a thick branch here at this end. I'm going to take it all the way around. I'm bending some of these small twigs back on itself because it's quite bare inside. So if I bend it back on itself I could create a tighter formation which will make the tree look less sparse because at the moment all the little pom-pom branches have gone to the extremities. I want to bring it back on itself. I will try and keep the camera working throughout because I don't want you to get the impression that I'm doing any magic or sleight of hand. So what you see is what you get. Tiny bit of wastage there. You see I've made the pad now. Rather than a pom-pom at the end like that I've now created a pad. If I tip the ends it will force bud back further into the branch. So you've got a pad now whereas before there wasn't a pad. You can see the pad forming there and over the time the next few months if it buds back further it'll fill that very nicely in there. So I've created that pad. Now let's see if I can create a pad with this bit. So I can still see that I have to do something with the top but the base of the triangle I have started to fill out. I must say that when we were in Holland this past weekend many of the trees that were brought for me to give opinion to work on are typical of the stuff that I do here. So thank you for all that you brought them because you seem to have read my mind and given me challenging material. Okay I'm going to wire this flat. So I'm not going to show you this. I'm going to wire this flat and wire this flat to save on the video time. I'm going to do it and then I'll show it to you and then the next major decision I will show you in a minute. So we've got to this stage. You can see that the conical shape is beginning to appear. I'm going to wire these three branches. So I'm going to start wiring these upright branches and create levels where there was none. I'm still cleaning the branches of all these snags. and a half millimeter wire but it's no good me telling you what I'm using because different branches have different degrees of flexibility. Even though it may be the same diameter if it's an older tree, older branch it could be less pliable. A pine is more flexible than a juniper. The older it is the less pliable it is and so it goes. You just got to judge each situation on its merits. What would we do without wire? Creating a bonsai would be very difficult indeed. You see I'm using all these long branches to create different tiers of branches, not just one tier. So this branch has got about two tiers, may even end up with three tiers of branches and then that's going to be a flat tier. Now that I've got the main branch wired I'm now going to wire each of these little bits into pads. So I will stop videoing for a while while we do the pads. So you've seen how we've created these level pads. I've got that. The conical shape is coming along nicely and with this one I might even bring it back onto it like this. Very stiff branches which means that they could be brittle so I've got to be ever so careful and I want to do something with these two branches as well and that one. So I've got to decide how to wire it or bend it. Okay so I can't decide whether to use a really thick piece of wire to do those two. Let's see if it bends. I'll let me try that. Sometimes, as I've always pointed out, two slightly thinner pieces of wire can be more effective than a very thick one. I don't know why it is. It's like reinforcement isn't it? the old dead branches. The little stubs make the wiring very difficult. Talking of wiring, there are some people who refuse to do bonsai using wire. I think it's very difficult to achieve anything without the use of wire. So this is where we've got to so far. You can see this side of the triangle is almost perfect and I've created a little bend here. I've created a little bend here but I need to decide what to do with that back part. I don't want the lines to conflict with each other. I want to be sympathetic with the rest of the tree. All the branches bending in the same way. Movement. What we call movement. Movement is the most important thing. Of course by applying the right grade of wire we can get the movement right. So I've got a little head. You see how much tighter the whole tree now looks. These pads have still to be formed to fill in the space. What to do with this one here? I can bring it back on itself like that and let me do a bit of jiggery pokery with thick wire. Bend this back on itself and see what transpires. So what do you want to use? Use I think three and a half. So I've done that with a bit of wiring. Now let's see if I can bring it tighter into manipulating the branches so that it forces the triangular shape. All is not done yet. I've still got to sort this pad out but you can see more or less how the triangular shape has been recreated. I'm sure this is what it could have looked like in its early days and it's quite quite different from what it started off with. If I compare the photographs I've just got to wire those and the bulk of it is done. So this is where I've got to. You can see we've tightened the whole thing and I've managed to create a triangular shape. This dead branch here I will probably gin. I won't waste your time showing you how to strip the bark. You know what it's all about. When it's all done I'll get one of my staff to do that. And this back branch here which is half dead I may keep it. If the customer wants to make a gin they can make a gin with it. So that will also be done. Now let's look at the roots to see what the roots are like. So it's not been repotted I would say for at least 20-30 years and this tree as I told you has been in this country for 60 years since the early 1960s. So it's time it had a repot. So let's see what the condition of the roots are. This black soil my goodness. So you can see the condition. See the roots are live but it's badly in need of repotting. See the roots are alive but we need to take at least a third of the roots of the old soil out and do it again. I don't want to show you the actual repotting because that is I think a waste of valuable video time. And the pot I've chosen is going to be a deeper pot because I want to bring the tree back to health. So I want to put in that pot. So when it's all done I'll take a final shot. Okay so here is the final tree. I potted it in a new pot. It's slightly larger than I would normally use but because this tree was stressed so much I think I will give it more room to grow and strengthen the tree once again. So from an inverted triangle I will try and get the editor to show a before and after shot. You can see how this tree has been transformed. I know there are little bits that I can still tinker with like pruning these downward hanging twigs. These are only minor cosmetic effects but you get the general idea. So from an inverted triangle I've managed to get it back into more of the semblance of a tree. So although the branches are not all horizontal they are creating the triangular shape which makes the tree work. So I hope you're not too disappointed and I'm sure the customer will be very happy too. So there you go. I hope you enjoyed this one.