Styling a Juniper Bonsai and Branch selection

So in phase one we talked about how to build out the Nabari on the tree and work with the root system of a plant that was grown from a cutting, a seedling, or an air layer. In phase two we talked about how to set up the initial structure of the trunk and thicken that trunk. Now in stage three we're going to be talking about what to do with the branch structure on your trees, working out how to select branches, how to wire those branches, how to shorten inner nodes, and how to start filling in the secondary and tertiary branches on the plant. So for starters here we're going to be taking a look at junipers in this section. We're also going to be diving into pines a little bit later and then we'll take an overview of deciduous material so you have a big broad spectrum of species to work with. So first up here let's take a look at our junipers. Now I've got two trees up here both of which are Itoigawa Shinpaku. They're slightly different genetic variety but they are both junipers, chinenses, Itoigawa. So the tree on the right hand side here is one that already has a pretty decent sized trunk on it and at this point I want to start working on the branch structure on the tree. So we've done the cutbacks a while back on this plant. We've allowed it to put out another flush of growth. It's got you know decently elongating shoots on it at this point so we can actually go through and start selecting branches and wiring things into position which we'll do here in just a second. But before we do that I want to show you the tree on the left hand side here. This is an Itoigawa that has had this process done to it multiple times over multiple years. So you can see that not only do we have primary branches set up we've got secondary and tertiary branches. It's starting to fill in at this point and we even have some shari on the trunk as well. So this is to show you that we can take things like cuttings of Itoigawa or any juniper, wind them up, wire them out, put them in the right pot, grow them out for a number of years, select back the branches, wire them again, and then eventually you end up with a pretty interesting and solid looking bonsai like the one on the left hand side there. So for starters here let's take a look at this guy in depth. We'll look at how we set the branch structure up, how we wire that out, and then how we also maybe continue to grow certain sections out for development purposes. So in phase three here we're going to be styling up this tree talking mostly about the branch structure of the plant. But before we do any work on it just want to give you a little bit of a background of this tree. So this was grown from a cutting, likely started I would say six to eight years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that. It was completely container grown but of course when it was very young the initial bends were put in the trunk just like what we did in phase two a few minutes ago with our little width there. Now the tree was grown in the container, blasted with fertilizer, thickened up, we had a big old long sacrifice branch up here at the top that you can see we've already removed in a previous session here at the nursery. So what we're going to be doing with this now is selecting out the branches and actually applying wire to create a new primary line to the top of the tree. New primary lines for the branch structure of the plant and potentially setting up the secondary structure as well. Just depends on what kind of branches we have to work with on the plant here. So first things first I'm going to get out some copper wire for this particular tree since we're working with a conifer and we're going to go ahead and apply that wire to the entire plant and I'm going to show you how we set the branches. Alright so first thing here what I want to do is turn the original apex that we cut off on the tree into a gin feature. When you're dealing with coniferous material, particularly junipers, the mantra here is gin everything. So we can always remove the gin features later if they're too loud or obtrusive within the design. But you know a gin feature obviously is a dead branch that we're peeling the bark off of to create the illusion of age within the tree. This is what would happen naturally out in the mountains for example if a branch died off the bark would eventually sort of weather off and peel off and you'd be left with a really cool interesting deadwood feature. So in order to create the gin feature at the top here I'm just going to take my pliers and start biting away from the end here all of the tissue and then we can peel it off. So in terms of timing for creating gins you really can do this any time of year. I would recommend you avoid the first part of spring as the new flush of growth is starting to emerge. It's usually better to do this you know after the first flush is hardened off or really any time the fall or winter will be absolutely fine. Now we'll say in the summer months it's going to be much easier to peel the bark off of here because there'll be a lot of water running through the tissue so it very easily comes off. But this time of year right now we're in late winter going into early spring just before the first flush comes out so it's quite difficult to get the bark off of here. We're gonna go ahead and break some of these ends back here just to give a little bit more of a naturalistic look. All right so now that I've created the gin at the top here I want to take a look at this bottom branch over here on the right hand side. So you'll notice that we have some really fine soft branching towards the interior but I've left this very long straight piece with just a tuft of foliage out here at the end. I did that for one specific reason and that is when we did the initial cut back on this a while ago I was afraid that if I took off such a large branch all at once it might die back and kill off our soft growth here. Well it's been a number of weeks and we've had you know really good success with keeping these branches alive here so I feel comfortable now taking off the end piece out here at the end. So this is one thing to consider when you're doing kind of an initial structural build on a tree like this you know particularly a juniper. We want to try to cut back to the softest growth possible and then build our primary structure from there. Because these plants are relatively young and it's relatively early in the process if we cut back to soft growth we can add the movement in there and then allow the terminal shoot again to elongate to thicken that branch to the desired diameter. So this is why I want to cut this off at this moment right now. At the end of this we'll go ahead and break back into a nice little gym feature as well. Okay so now that we've taken care of all of that the next thing I want to do here is re-establish a new primary line to the trunk before we actually set the branches. So again we took the initial apex off of here turn it into a gin and now we have this larger branch towards the rear that was a side lateral branch that we're now going to turn into the new apex. So this is part of actually phase two where we're building the structure of the trunk creating taper in the trunk. You know we've allowed something to grow out to give us thickening at the base now we're cutting back rebuilding a new apex and then we can build the branch structure on the sides here. Alright so now that we've got the structural wire on there we're going to go ahead and bend the new apex up into a tentative position here. This won't be necessarily the final position but I just want to get it up and out of the way so that then we can start building our lower branch structure on the tree. So one thing I recommend when you're initially building a structure on a tree like this is to just go ahead and wire all of the lignified or woody branches across the entire tree and then position them in place. If we get to you know a stage further along into kind of the refinement aspect of the tree where we're building out like the tertiary branches for example you can go branch by branch as you set it but building the initial structure I find much easier if I just wire everything on the plant and then set it all at once. Okay so I've got all of the primary branches wired up on the tree and now we can start setting things into place. So we're not necessarily going to use all of the branches as foliar branches on the tree we might actually bend some of these up to be gin features in the future. So just because you know we're starting to work with the branch structure on the plant doesn't mean that we have to use every piece of foliage on here and it also doesn't mean that we have to cut off everything that we don't necessarily need in the structural design of the foliage. So a good example here would be down at the base we've got this large branch that comes out of the left-hand side here got a really nice soft downwards easily to manipulate branch here another nice soft branch here but we have a very thick heavy branch coming up out of the top. This thick heavy branch is really not going to be usable as a foliar pad on the tree it's just too heavy but we can twist it up into all sorts of crazy shapes just like we did with the trunk in previous years to then turn into a gin feature in the future. So the trees not necessarily going to look you know fully padded out and complete at this stage but again we're just setting up that primary structure. Okay so first thing I like to do here with a tree like this is to set the primary directional branch so we're gonna do that on the right hand side here first. Alright so as the tree is situated here as you're viewing it both of these branches here actually protrude towards the front so we need to shorten them visually by actually taking them towards the rear first. So I'm gonna bend at the base here take it towards the back and then we're gonna take the end of the branch and push it again towards the front. So this will give us our side to side movement and a little bit of shortening as well here. This is a very very common thing to do. Alright we could do something similar with the branch that's a little bit shorter here in the front we'll take it off to the side like so. Maybe clean up some of the underside of the pad although that's not entirely necessary at this stage and then sort of tentatively set it in that position. We'll drop this guy just a little more here. Alright so that feels pretty good. Now again we're trying not to get necessarily an s-curve out of the branch we want up and down movement and side to side movement so it gives us a little bit more of a three-dimensional look just like with the trunk here. Alright so the next step here we're gonna come to the opposite side of the tree over here and set our counterbalance branch. So we'll drop this guy down into here we'll also use this one here twisting and dropping it as well. Keep in mind when you're dealing with junipers you can rotate the branch up to 180 degrees if you need to. We'll do that sometimes to reorient foliage in a proper location. Alright so that gives us a little bit of depth back here and our counterbalance branch to the directionality of the tree. Alright so the next thing here I want to go ahead and move up a little bit further into the tree here and figure out what we're going to use as the actual apex. So as of now this tallest point here is technically the apex but I want to create a tree that's actually quite short and has a lot of interesting movement. So there really is no need to utilize all of this growth up here. So what we're gonna do in this instance is go ahead and remove a majority of the growth but I do want to leave the terminal shoots up here at the end to allow us to create a better transition from the thick trunk here to the new line that we're creating here. So similar concept to our trunk thickening this is just to create taper essentially. But I do want to remove some of the foliage in between what we're potentially going to use as the apex down here and the end out here that way we can separate them visually from one another and make it more obvious that this is going to become a sacrifice branch up here at the top. In addition to separating these visually it also allows us to get more light to the lower branches down here because we don't have as much foliage in between so they're not going to get shaded out and weaken this area down here. We're just gonna go ahead and stick this straight up out of the way so I can manipulate the remaining branches. Okay now before we set our foliar branches in this area let's go ahead and put some crazy twists in the potential gin out here on the side. And just like when we were working with our young seedling or our young cutting with the case of a juniper here where we twisted it up not really thinking too much about the future design of the plant we're gonna do the same thing with our gin feature here on the side. I'm just gonna twist this into knots essentially into very odd shapes over exaggerating the movement here because eventually this is going to all be turned into a nice little deadwood feature. All right so it looks like a bit of a jumbled mess but you can imagine this being a deadwood feature here similar to our gin that we created out of the original apex. All right now let's come back over to our small branches on the right hand side here. We're going to position these down we're looking for kind of a downward-outward motion fanning everything out like a hand with a little bit of movement side to side and up and down. Something along those lines should be pretty good. We'll continue working our way up towards the top again trying to create a bit of a padded look to the tree but the goal here is to create kind of a scalene triangle for the most part so we do want that directional branch sticking out the furthest at the bottom and then kind of tapering up towards the interior. All right and last but not least we'll set the apex here so I want this to be a continuation of the line from below so we're going to add some motion to it bringing it a little bit further forward and then having it actually move in the same direction as the directional branch on the tree which in the case of this plant is to the right. Something along those lines right there. So it is probably a little bit difficult to tell in the video what exactly the structure of the tree is but I think overall if you can just sort of focus on the silhouette of the plant ignoring our gin feature in the future here you can see that sort of scalene triangle and potentially a little bit of padding going on. We're not really concerned at this stage about the undersides of the branches, making sure that they're not too