Carl Morrow sent us this digitalized revision (and two others, see below) of a juniper that was originally submitted to our ‘Fearless Bonsai Warrior‘ program, by John Romano. This is the second critique of John’s juniper that has been submitted to Bonsai Bark (here’s the other).

Carl’s turn with John’s Juniper
The photos and text in this post were submitted by Carl Morrow. Carl has been here before with his own tree. Now he’s tackling John Romano’s juniper.

“A tree needs to tell a consistent story and when one has an outstanding feature or focal point then the theme created needs to be repeated through other parts of the tree to create a consistent image.

This is a lovely tree that I would happily play with. Deadwood is a very powerful focal point and it is difficult to look anywhere else when there is a stark white area on the tree. In the current form, John’s tree has single piece of deadwood that is not repeated anywhere else. What could have caused just one major branch to die without affecting anything else on the tree? The tip of the jin is firmly pointing downwards while the rest of the (trunk line and foliage) tree has an upward feel. For this reason I find the jin jarring and unnatural. I would do one of two things to solve this.”

Continue reading Revisiting John Romano’s Almost Famous Juniper