[A Forest Tale] TimS – Trident Thicket
Posted: January 3rd, 2020, 5:05 pm
Well i can make my entry official having given the subject some thought and had some ideas about where i might head with this.
My initial reaction was to go native with some tube stock she-oaks i have, but i decided that i don't yet know enough about their growth habit and how to control it to really be able to make headway with them in earnest. I will keep those separate for now and experiment out of the forum eye.
My thoughts then turned to what species i am confident with; their growth habit, management and development. I considered Chinese Elm, Japanese Maple and Ginkgo biloba among others. Finally I settled on Trident Maple as it would allow me great flexibility with root work during the assembly, as well as knowing they grow successfully for me with my micro-climate in the back yard. It removed one major variable for me in that i don't need to wholly learn a new species.
Given that i am using familiar material and not really pushing myself on that front, i have had some ideas about how i could use them to create a little more interest than just putting them in a pot and calling it a day. Whether it will really come out how i intend it to remains to be seen, and what better excuse to experiment than a bit of a friendly competition on AusBonsai.
I am beginning from this box of young trident maples with varying trunk thicknesses (shot on garden chair for size comparison.
I noticed a couple of the really thin ones had died off, so i decided that they all really needed a pretty urgent cutback to let light and air back into the middle. This also has the double benefit (i hope) of getting an extra summer flush for a cheeky little bit of development before they go dormant. If you're doing evergreen you've got a good chuck of extra growing time over me!
That big pile of material was whispering to me *Tiiiiiiiiiiim..........cuuuuuttttiiiiinnnngggsss' and even though it's the height of summer i decided that i would give them a go as cuttings instead of just throwing the material away. I'm not sure if these would count for use in the group, and even if they did they would look out of place being so small. I'll just keep them on the side and perhaps make more forests in the future with them if they actually root after being taken so late. Somewhere between 50-100 cuttings i would estimate.
At this point i was staring at the box full of freshly cut back trunks thinking "hmmmm, i think the final composition could use more trunks on the thicker end of the scale. That's when this old group i threw together using pretty average nursery stock trident maples returned to my mind. I now, with permission from MJL of course, reserve rights to pull from this group and use them in the composition when it comes time to get these into the pot and work out the layout as there are a significant number of thinner trunks in the box group and having a few pencil thick trunks to pull from might make a big difference in the end.
Well for now i hurry up and wait for dormancy so i can get stuck into finding out what gold or ass-biscuits awaits me in the creation phase. Until then i'll be putting thought to how i can re-create my ideas.
My initial reaction was to go native with some tube stock she-oaks i have, but i decided that i don't yet know enough about their growth habit and how to control it to really be able to make headway with them in earnest. I will keep those separate for now and experiment out of the forum eye.
My thoughts then turned to what species i am confident with; their growth habit, management and development. I considered Chinese Elm, Japanese Maple and Ginkgo biloba among others. Finally I settled on Trident Maple as it would allow me great flexibility with root work during the assembly, as well as knowing they grow successfully for me with my micro-climate in the back yard. It removed one major variable for me in that i don't need to wholly learn a new species.
Given that i am using familiar material and not really pushing myself on that front, i have had some ideas about how i could use them to create a little more interest than just putting them in a pot and calling it a day. Whether it will really come out how i intend it to remains to be seen, and what better excuse to experiment than a bit of a friendly competition on AusBonsai.
I am beginning from this box of young trident maples with varying trunk thicknesses (shot on garden chair for size comparison.
I noticed a couple of the really thin ones had died off, so i decided that they all really needed a pretty urgent cutback to let light and air back into the middle. This also has the double benefit (i hope) of getting an extra summer flush for a cheeky little bit of development before they go dormant. If you're doing evergreen you've got a good chuck of extra growing time over me!
That big pile of material was whispering to me *Tiiiiiiiiiiim..........cuuuuuttttiiiiinnnngggsss' and even though it's the height of summer i decided that i would give them a go as cuttings instead of just throwing the material away. I'm not sure if these would count for use in the group, and even if they did they would look out of place being so small. I'll just keep them on the side and perhaps make more forests in the future with them if they actually root after being taken so late. Somewhere between 50-100 cuttings i would estimate.
At this point i was staring at the box full of freshly cut back trunks thinking "hmmmm, i think the final composition could use more trunks on the thicker end of the scale. That's when this old group i threw together using pretty average nursery stock trident maples returned to my mind. I now, with permission from MJL of course, reserve rights to pull from this group and use them in the composition when it comes time to get these into the pot and work out the layout as there are a significant number of thinner trunks in the box group and having a few pencil thick trunks to pull from might make a big difference in the end.
Well for now i hurry up and wait for dormancy so i can get stuck into finding out what gold or ass-biscuits awaits me in the creation phase. Until then i'll be putting thought to how i can re-create my ideas.