Twisted & Otherwise Abused 6/15/14

Man made twisting. This little Shimpaku juniper was grown (in Japan) and shaped by human hands. Whoever grew it did a great job at creating a natural effect – it’s almost impossible to mimic the raw and rugged look that nature sometimes comes up with after hundreds of years of stressful conditions. The final styling was done by Masahiko Kimura. You can find this photo and the chapter that shows Kimura shaping this tree in The Magician, the Bonsai Art of Kimura 2.

The following photos are from a post titled Creating Twisted Juniper on a blog that I happily just discovered, called Tiny Trident Bonsai. I selected a few of the post’s many step-by-step photos. You can visit Tiny Trident Bonsai for the whole article.

Is it possible to grow bonsai material that has the highly coveted wild yamadori look? Without going into detail about the marks of countless years spent being barely sustained and even abused by nature and the seeming impossibility of replicating that, still, judging by the photo above, you might conclude that given enough skill and the right material, you can at least come close.

We don’t do a lot of how-to articles here on Bark, but every now and then we find something we just can’t overlook. In this case it’s personal; I’m field growing some small Shimpaku and am interested in doing what I can to create that elusive twisted-and-otherwise-abused-by-nature look.

 

A young Shimpaku juniper just out of a 1 gallon nursery container. This photo and the following photos are from Tiny Trident Bonsai. This caption and the next five captions are ours. The last one is from Tiny Trident.

 

The lower growth has been removed. This allows us to see the tree’s basic structure and also provides a clean slate for wiring.

 

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.

 

The first bend is on the lower trunk.

 

The next bend is farther up just above the first branch.

 

A third bend is 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.”