Professional bonsai and suiseki from Peter Warren. Japanese bonsai educated by well known bonsai master Kunio Kobayashi.
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One for the Future
Many thanks to Sean Hayes of ABBA for his help and his photographic skills. Go to the Gallery and choose Shohin Juniper from the drop down list to see the photos.
I stumbled across a cache of these trees hidden away in deepest darkest Cheshire, quite a long way away from the Itoigawa valley which has become incredibly famous in the bonsai world for producing a strain of juniper with particularly beautiful and compact lush green foliage, perfect for bonsai, especially shohin sized trees. Junipers are easily propagated by taking cuttings and will grow very strongly. This tree, one of many created in the same way is approximately ten years old. For a comprehensive article on shohin creation in general refer to Bonsai Europe issue 82 for an article by Urushibata, one of Japans premier shohin bonsai artists.
Without wishing to degrade this material it is quite common to find “farmed” trees like this. Mass produced, all very similar and without incredible natural character, but, and this is a big and important but, very cheap and perfect as starter material. Given the proper care and attention a tree like this could become a very presentable shohin tree within five years. It will never replace the beauty of a yamadori juniper with gnarled and aged deadwood but it isn’t trying to. This is the kind of material that you can learn with and perfect the basic techniques, getting a good grip of the principles of bonsai before moving up a level and investing large amounts of time, money and commitment into a “real” tree.
Of course within a group of 50 mass produced trees, 10 will be absolutely impossible to turn into anything good, 20 will be difficult, 10 will be relatively easy and the best ten will be the ones that I have hand picked before anyone else! Choosing your starter material is the first and arguably the most important step on the road to creating beautiful bonsai. Not even the exalted masters of Japan can create a silk purse from a sows ear, their real skill and vision comes from their choice of material. Given a piece of terrible material 99% of people will create a terrible tree, the other 1% is a different and much longer story.
How to choose a good piece of material.
The most important thing for a tree of this type is the line of the trunk. This is the one thing that we cannot change. Juniper do not and should not have massive nebari, they should not have roots spreading out radially like a maple, but the line and direction of the trunk as it exits the soil is important, this sets the initial direction of the tree and starts the motion of the eye, which should be able to then follow the line of the trunk easily as it twists around and up into the crown. One of the most important features of junipers in the wild is the twisting of the life line, spiralling around the deadwood. With farmed trees that have not been subjected to the snow, wind and extreme mountain conditions, the lifeline generally grows straight and true as water will always take the easiest path up or down, unless forced otherwise. Thankfully this particular tree has been made skilfully and was wired and twisted around at an early stage in its development (see Urushibata article). However these twists and turns can be too violent and as the life line grows and thicken, they can grow into one another, creating a massive lump where two parts of the trunk have fused together. This must be avoided at all costs. When this happens it is impossible to tell where the water is going and subsequently where you can carve away safely. It also makes for an aesthetically unappealing tree, with a grotesque lumpy trunk, bulging and ungraceful. With our bonsai we want to conveniently ignore the ugly side of nature and show only the beauty that can be created by such conditions, or in this case, attempt to replicate this and create it by hand.
In short, choose a tree where you can see the line of the trunk easily and it moves with some interesting twisting movement.
Do not worry unduly about branch placement at this stage, with junipers and particularly shohin trees it is possible to bend and grow branches into the places where you want foliage. Coniferous Shohin trees are all about the beauty of the line of the trunk, the silhouette and in some cases nebari but not the branching structure. Obviously the best trees have a perfect branching structure but when working in such limited time and space, shortcuts can be made, and are, even in the greatest of trees.