This little Shimpaku juniper was grown in Japan and shaped by human hands. Though it’s almost impossible to mimic the raw and rugged look that nature sometimes comes up with, this one isn't half bad. The final styling was done by Masahiko Kimura. You can find this photo in The Magician, the Bonsai Art of Kimura 2.
Is it possible to grow bonsai that have the coveted natural look you find with collected (yamadori) trees? Judging from the photo above, you can at least come close.
We don’t do a lot of how-to articles, but now and then we find something we just can’t overlook. In this case it’s personal; I’m field growing some small Shimpaku junipers and am interested in doing what I can to create that twisted-and-otherwise-abused-by-nature look.
The photo above is from our The Magician, the Bonsai Art of Kimura 2. The rest of the photos shown here are from a post titled Creating Twisted Juniper on a blog called Tiny Trident Bonsai. I selected a few of the post’s many step-by-step photos. You can visit Tiny Trident for the whole article.
A young Shimpaku juniper just out of a 1 gallon nursery container. This photo and the following photos are from Tiny Trident Bonsai.
The lower growth has been removed and three strands of wire have been applied. Now it's time to do some bending. BTW: the wire looks a lot like our Bonsai Aesthetics wire (all of our wire is now 25% off at Stone Lantern).
The first bend is on the lower trunk.
A second and third bend have been created on the trunk and the final (for now) bend is on the first branch.
Done for now. Here's Tiny Trident's caption: "This tree will be left to grow in this state until the wire starts to significantly cut in. As this happens I will take the wire off and carve a twisted shari up the trunk. This should hopefully create a short tree with lots of interest in the trunk."
This post is a rerun (with some minor changes). It originally appear June 2014.
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