I last showed a picture of this Juniper in October 2010. After studying the tree in detail in late 2010, I found that I was not happy with the lack of structure in the branches and foliage and that something had to be done to correct it.
Oct 2010: The foliage seemed too much like a bush and lacked definition. I have always been an advocate of pruning and not pinching junipers, but due to laziness and lack of time in recent years, I pruned much less and pinched too much. This resulted in coarse foliage at the ends of the branches and a shape that was too bushy and without any internal structure. This was especially true in the middle section of the tree which was getting weaker and weaker. This area needed to fill out and get stronger.
So I decided in the spring of 2010, shortly after I had posted the first images of the tree in Ausbonsai, to let the tree recover its strength, especially in the middle section. But first, I had to prune the tree quite severely, especially in the interior, to remove all the weak foliage and dying branches to let in lots of light to encourage back budding. This generated a lot of juvenile foliage which were left alone to mature back to adult foliage.
May 2011: You can see in this picture of the tree taken in the autumn of 2011 that the tree’s structure was considerably improved in the past 7 months. I have also allowed a sacrifice branch to grow in the middle to strengthen that section of the tree. I made sure that the tree was never pinched with fingers, but pruned with scissors only. Lots of growing tips were encouraged and the tree was fed once a week during the growing season. The tree rewarded me by converting all juvenile foliage back to adult form within one growing season.
While the tree was recovering its strength in 2010/2011, I was looking for a new pot. I had always known that the old pot it was in was too big and that the shape did not suit that tree at all(to my taste anyway). I looked everywhere but could not find anything that I liked. Finally I found a pot from John Wang, a bonsai artist from America who apprenticed in Japan and was back there to help out during the Kokufu exhibition. The pot is a vintage oval Tokoname pot probably about 40yrs old. It had a slight patina and to my eyes, was perfect for the tree. So the pot was sent to me from Tokyo and in the spring of 2011, I repotted the juniper.
Sept 2011 after repotting: From then on the tree was allowed to grow and lots of growing tips were encouraged. These were selectively pruned back but were always replaced with another growing tip.
The tree a few weeks ago, before wiring:
This was how the tree looked like as of yesterday, after wiring (please pardon my choice of stand
, I will take a proper picture of this tree one day!):June 2012 I have again left lots of growing tips on the foliage. The middle and lower parts of the tree still needs to compact so there is still work to be done yet. I feel that the tree has improved over the last 20 months and am very happy with the results so far. All comments are welcome.
Mark
great tree you have there also i agree with Matthew a little thinning out up the top is all i would do to hopefully push more growth into the lower branches. The tree looks very healthy as well 
