Sometimes I work on nursery trees, sometimes I work on client’s trees……and sometimes if I’ve been really good I get to work on my own trees. Hopefully these regular visits will give you an insight into what goes on behind closed doors……….
Studio Stories – Picea Pungens
This small Spruce is typical of something you might find in an older type nursery or garden centre. Sadly a dying breed now almost totally replaced by the modern supermarket type garden centres.
The tree has some age and character but also a lot of dead inner and lower branches due to lack of light.
So the first job is to give the tree a good cleaning out removing all dead/weak branches to open up the trunk line. It appears to have a heavy
trunk for its size giving it excellent potential for a bonsai.
Unfortunately as soon as you get below soil level there is severe inverse taper where this dwarf variety has been grafted. Our stocky impressive base has suddenly disappeared before my very eyes.
When you look at this closely it is obvious that almost every customer will simply put the tree back on the bench for sale…….it is obviously no good for bonsai……..
……….unless of course you like a challenge, which is really what creating bonsai is all about……trying to make the best use of your material or trying to get the best possible tree out of it.
I decided to create a shari and jin to try and camouflage the inverse taper and create 
movement in an otherwise straight trunk. Sometimes when you have a problem you have to make a feature out of it.
The trunk forks into two and originally I envisaged selecting one to go with the lower trunk and removing the other. Now it was possible to use both trunks and style the tree in the line which worked best with the shari and movement in the live vein.
The tree was thinned out further and any branches deemed unnecessary were removed. It was now ready to be wired.
The jin would also have to be bent using the heat method with a chef’s blow torch.
Altering the planting angle and creating a tree in the semi-cascade style has enabled us to use both trunks and made the inverse taper problem much less obvious. The shari 
needs more refinement work to emphasise the deadwood area and it’s natural flow into the jin. The line of the jin will also have to be fine tuned.
The tree will be repotted into an appropriate bonsai pot set at it’s new angle in spring.
Not such a bad outcome for a “no hoper”………