styling | Bonsai & Yamadori from Tony Tickle

It is important to know when to cut back and create good ramification. Planning the structure of your tree is critical in the early stages, even though the silhouette of the tree may look luscious and full, the structure and therefore the future quality of the tree will be compromised. The ‘pig tailing’ long branches and trimming the outline of the tree is a practice that must be stopped if our bonsai are to reach a high level.

Back budding is created on ‘third’ year growth, in 2013 this means that branches that were grown in 2011, so in the early stages of creating the foliage ‘clouds’ you are working on three year cycles.

If you cut back too early the strength of the tree is weakened, the best time is when the new growth is approx 5 inches or approx 20cm long, trim back to between 12 and 20 needles. This growth will have thickened the branch and stimulated good root growth, and trimming in July ensures that there is enough time for the tree to make new buds both on the trimmed area and further back down the branch.

To encourage new back budding pluck the needles on the third year’s growth, this will throw out masses of strong new growth before Autumn ready for the following year.

For my personal collection I have always worked on native European trees, this is for three key reasons. First: I live in the cold wet north of England and working on local material should give me the best chance to create bonsai that will thrive and survive in my climate. Second availability of good ‘imported’ material, for sure GOOD raw material worth buying was in short supply when I started in bonsai 30 years ago, simply put the trees coming out of the far east were the runts of the litter, we got the crap that that they did not want. Thankfully that appears to have changed over the last few years as the art is in decline in Japan more material is becoming available and at the right price. Third: Most material coming from the Far East is either ‘finished’ or ‘semi-finished’ I am an artist who prefers to work with totally raw material even though it takes longer, the satisfaction is greater.

This year however a Chuhin White Pine caught my eye… It displayed all the attributes and potential to create a great tree… Almost 100% of imported White Pines (WP) are grafted on Black Pine (BP) stock, this is done because BP is stronger and the bark quality is great, the problem is the graft is usually so prominent to render the tree quite ugly because the transition from Black to White is pronounced. On my tree it is almost invisible.

The tree was very healthy, had an abundance of foliage, good nebari, movement and taper… all things that you should look for when purchasing a bonsai, I was smitten… I bought my first ‘import’. Immediately after purchase it needed repotting as it was pot bound (this was why the price was favourable) I slip potted the tree into a lovely Dan Barton Pot.

That was six months ago, this week with the help of Mikey I completed the styling started by Hans van Meers and a few of the guys at the Burrs Event… THEY were supposed to complete the tree but never got past needle plucking and wiring a few branches… I believe beers and chatting got in the way! So it was down to me and Mikey to do the work.

The tree had an abundance of needles that needed to be removed. After selecting those branches I no longer required we set about wiring the remainder. This took over seven hour’s work fine wiring and bud selection. WP only has one growth per year and back budding has to be carefully managed, this first styling involved branch placement and random bud removal with a view to the final image being a refined fuller canopy in a couple of years.