So was the title of a great class offered by Bonsai West (
http://www.bonsaiwest.com) which I attended with my wife. Although I know she attended primarily to make me happy, in the end, she enjoyed the afternoon.
Each pair in the class was set up at a table with copious amounts of bonsai soil, tools, screen and wire. The instructor started with a brief discussion of the history of bonsai and some of the styles and rules which transform small shrubs into "ancient" trees. His description of bonsai care, especially with respect to watering, was helpful and gave some hope for the survival of our pending bonsai creations.
Each student was able to choose a small, nursery-potted, plant from a number of Jade, fig, or juniper selections and a corresponding pot. My wife chose a very nice dwarf jade plant, portulacaria afra, to work on along with a black, glazed, rectangular pot. After removing the jade from it's nursery pot, the first step was to remove the uppermost soil to expose the surface roots to see where the bottom of the trunk actually was. At this point, the plant was rotated numerous time to find the bast side to serve as a "front" and decide which growing tip would define a leader. Once this was done it was off to shearing small leaves on trunks as well as small trunk shoots that wouldn't become eventual main branches from the trunk as well as cutting back overly vigorous branch tips. Once that was done, the root ball was opened up with the finders and reduced in size by pruning.
I could see Ginny was pretty timid at the prospect of chopping into the plant root ball. Little did she suspect what we would have to do later on in the afternoon to a poor ficus! After the roots were pruned, the pot was prepared with screens to cover the drain holes and wire to hold in the jade tree. Once the tree was planted and the pot filled with soil, she used her thumbs to pack in the soil to remove any air pockets in the pot. Then the surface was covered with white decorative gravel, a stylish rock and the whole creation, plant, pot and all was submerged in a bucket filled with water for it's first drink. What a nice looking plant indeed…….my wife definitely has a knack for making ancient trees!
I decided to try for a conifer since I've never had to prune one. There was a nice, low, spreading
Juniper procumbens available that I thought might make a nice cascade as I chose it along with an unglazed pot. It was tough, after looking at it, the instructor convinced me it could be pruned into an upright tree so I picked a main trunk, front and apex and gave it a whirl. Although the final creation is very unbalanced, I was happier with the outcome the I thought I would be. Hopefully after some time, I can direct the leader upward and back toward the main trunk line and bring some balance back into my tree.
After completing our individual trees, we could work together on a larger tree. We chose a willow leaf fig, ficus nerifolia, for our victim. The tree had very interesting and well developed nebari and a tapering trunk which was great. However it looked as if the tree had trunk chop followed by inattention since there was a mass of twigs growing out of the top of the trunk in every which direction. It took some time, but we carefully pruned out all but some thicker primary branches which opened up the crown quite a lot. We chose a leader as well which will eventually form the apex of the tree.
On removing the soil from the base of the tree, we could see that the roots were a jumbled, criss-crossed mess as well. As we were separating them and deciding which to keep, out instructor helped us by chopping pretty much all of the main taproots, to our horror. Who would ever think a plant could survive such a drastic loss of rootage! But we did it and planted our new creation in a pretty, oval pot with a green glaze.
Thanks to Phillip, our instructor…..what a great way to get folks going in bonsai!
