[Music]
Hi, my name is Kevin Bielicki. I'm the
Horticultural Specialty Grower in charge
of the bonsai collection here at
Longwood Gardens. Today I'm going to
be sharing with you how to create a
bonsai from some nursery stock material
that you'll find here. So, I'm gonna start
here with this procumbens juniper that I
purchased at a local garden center.
When I bought this I didn't want to
just select any tree, I wanted to really
pick a tree that had really nice
qualities to it. Some of the
qualities that I look for are the width
of the trunk, I'm looking for a wide
trunk.
I'm looking for a tree that has a wide
root structure to it and also really
fine branching to it. These qualities
lend themself to bonsai because they
allow for the tree to have these really old
substantial aged look to them, but still
being a very young nursery stock. Okay? If
we were to start with something that is
a fine twig we're going to end up with
something that looks young and juvenile.
So, looking for movement, larger branch
thickness and root spread is really
important when selecting a tree. So, I'm
going to go in and start on this tree first
by going in and removing any dead
unwanted branches. Also, I'm going to be
looking at the main trunk, any crotches
between branches, removing any areas of
growth between them. So, I can really
start to see the main structure of this
tree and decide where I want to take it
from there.
Initially I'm not going to go through
and do any major branch removal. I just
really want to be able to get inside and
see what the tree has, okay?
[Music]
So now that I've reduced a lot of the
foliage, a lot of the extra growth, I can
now look inside the tree. I see the
main structure, the main trunk, much
better. I can also see a lot of these
other smaller branches that branch off
that main trunk. One of the decisions to
make now is which ones to keep and
which ones to leave. Part of the
decision-making is based off the
size of the branches. So, typically you
want to keep larger branches at the
bottom and have finer thinner branches
that work your way towards the top. Also
as you can see now, this tree sort of has
this S shape that works its way up to a
finer branching, and we have a branch
here, and we also have a branch here.
On the outside of a bend those are
good areas to keep branches. Typically
you want to avoid having branches in the
concave areas inside this area. So I'm
going to go through again and I'm going to
remove anything that's growing in that
sort of way and then decide what the
front will be. Right now I'm looking at
this as a possible front. Some of the
good qualities are that it does have
this branching here on the end and I'll
be able to pull some of this branching
around here to create multiple layers of
pads. Right now I'm going to go through and
I'm going to cut down this pot maybe to
around to two inches down or so from the
top lip. The reason for doing this is
I want to expose the roots that are
underneath. I'm having trouble
determining what I necessarily want as
the front because there are multiple
angles, so exposing the roots and
looking at the root flare may give me
some indication what might work as a
better front for this tree. So, I'm going
to go through it with just my scissors
and cut around. Then I'll come in
with a root rake or even with scissors,
and remove some of this excess soil.
[Music]
So I chose a front for this
after cutting away the pot. It
really allowed me to see much more into
the tree, being able to identify
the negative space in the shapes within
the tree and also the structure of the
branches. So, I'm going to put these two
pieces of wire to mark the front so
you guys will be able to see what I'm
identifying as the front. One thing with
this is that the angle is going to be
changed. In designing a tree never
limit yourself to the orientation that
it is in the pot. Trees can be altered
different ways, in different shapes, to
evoke different feelings and also to
emphasize different parts of the line
within the tree. So I chose this as the
front. What I really like about this
angle is it has a slight forward lean to
it. Also I have a nice movement within
this area and I have alternating
branches and I also have branches in
the back. So I have a nice first branch
here. I also have this top apex that I
can swing around to make it top. And then
I have this really nice gestural
movement of this branch on the right
here, that I can wire out to fill out as
a pad as well.
[Music]
So to this point I went through this
procombens and I've determined the angle.
I went through and selected my
branches and I've also gone through and
did a lot of initial wiring. Now I
haven't gone too far in depth with the
wiring. I did a lot of the main
branches in some of the secondaries, but
I haven't really wired out some of the
very finer tips right now. One of the
things is this may not be necessary to do at
this point. There's a lot of juvenile
growth, a lot of unsubstantial branches
to this, so I'm gonna see how some of
these grow out first and then I'll go
through and selectively prune some of
these and then wire them out a little
bit further. So right now here's what we
have is our front and as you can see we
have a very nice smaller compact tree
compared to what we started off with.
The next step would be to reduce
this root ball system and fit it into a
smaller container that will complement
the design of the tree. Okay, so what I'm
going to do is, I'm going to go through
and remove this from the pot and I'm
going to prune this pretty heavily to
reduce that root system.
[Music]
Now that I went through here and
cleaned up the procumbens juniper or the
Juniperus procumbens,
I removed a significant amount of
the soil and the root system. In the
container that you saw that it was in, most of
that was really just soil. When you saw
me removing the initial part of the root
ball or the soil from the container a
lot of that was not root. So I went
through and cut that in half
initially and then I further went
through and I raked out all the
roots. I reduced it pretty
significantly. So now that we've reduced
the root system I have it down to the
bare roots, and now we can put into a much
better well draining soil that is much
better for the aeration and the
watering of the tree. I'm going to go
through and I'm goint to select a pot
that will compliment it. Most likely
I'll choose something that's a non-glaze.
That's most typical for our evergreen
trees and something that will be
just large enough for the roots to fit
in. That's it. Thanks for joining us.
[Music]