Woolly Bush (Adenanthos)

[Mickeyjaytee]

Thanks again Pat, I really appreciate it. The humble woolly bush is underrated and underused imo!

Thanks for your updates and looking forward to more.

Cheers mate

It sure is. I think it has huge potential to be a keystone bonsai species for us in WA.

No worries mate, happy to share what I know. The more we share our experiences, we can all learn from each other and advance our bonsai practices faster.

Just one important side note I will add that I forgot to include above - Be sure to only do root work and repotting on your woolly bush when it is in an actively growing state, and don't remove foliage at the same time as repotting. If it has too much growth, prune it back first, then give the tree time to recover and start elongating again before you repot and work the roots. See my photos in this thread as an example.

I definitely agree. I’ve learnt so much solely on the forums. It’s great especially to see new species and updates on development. I definitely need to to pop in to the bonsai society again.

I’m trialling a few WA species which I will definitely post if I have some success. I’m always very interested in your development threads especially on WA natives. There just aren’t enough people exploring them! We have so many great potential bonsai trees/plants.

I will keep that in mind. I did do some pruning on one with root work yesterday hopefully it lives. It’s going to be a nervous wait.

Thanks again for all the info and for sharing it!

[Patmet]

This has had a good amount of growth since December, so this week I have given it a hard trim and clean out. There are quite a lot of branches now so I spent hours over the course of several nights getting it done.

It currently has no wire on, but I want to go through and wire a lot of the branches again to tweak the positioning a bit.

20240219_201209_1.jpg

Before work

20240220_200855_1.jpg

During

20240222_175237_1.jpg

After

20240222_175934_1.jpg

20240222_180007_1.jpg

20240222_175947_1.jpg

20240222_180032_1.jpg

20240222_175656_1.jpg

Blending into background natural woolly bushes

[Patmet]

Playing around today with practicing taking photos of some of my trees. The woolly bush is looking nice and full now. I will let it get fairly overgrown over winter to build strength back up before I do a hard prune again coming into spring. I think this also helps it cope with the extra rainfall in winter.

It’s funny the A.I. On my iPad photos identified this as a 5 needle pine. It’s incorrect but I give it kudos for trying. I like to think it could pass for that white pine look too.

IMG_0068.jpeg

IMG_0069.jpeg

[Mickeyjaytee]

Hey Patrick,

Huge fan of the bonsai. It’s certainly one of my faves. I was wondering if it was ok to ask a question here? I notice that you do a lot of cutting back during development. How often (depending on tree) do you perform it? Is it after everytime it sends out new growth? Also, do you cut back while it’s actively growing so the plant can develop more options and ramification instead of the tree focussing on the long shoot or, do you always wait til the tree has hardened off that new foliage before cutting back?

For example my topiary Westringia, I pluck the lead shoot even while it’s actively extending to redirect the growth to the two shoots beneath it for immediate effect. With that said a bonsai is a tree and may need that time to get its energy back from hardening off which is what I’m unsure of.

Any help would be great a please feel free to move the post if it’s in the wrong thread.

Cheers mate

[Patmet]

Hey Patrick,

Huge fan of the bonsai. It’s certainly one of my faves. I was wondering if it was ok to ask a question here? I notice that you do a lot of cutting back during development. How often (depending on tree) do you perform it? Is it after everytime it sends out new growth? Also, do you cut back while it’s actively growing so the plant can develop more options and ramification instead of the tree focussing on the long shoot or, do you always wait til the tree has hardened off that new foliage before cutting back?

For example my topiary Westringia, I pluck the lead shoot even while it’s actively extending to redirect the growth to the two shoots beneath it for immediate effect. With that said a bonsai is a tree and may need that time to get its energy back from hardening off which is what I’m unsure of.

Any help would be great a please feel free to move the post if it’s in the wrong thread.

Cheers mate

Short answer is yes, I do cut it back each time it sends out new growth to get the ramification. The longer answer is how often I do it. That depends on a few things. Sometimes I'll cut while sending out shoots before they harden off, but generally I like to let things grow out a fair bit before then cutting back hard to interior buds. Especially in the early development stage.

Even on bonsai that I'm refining and increasing ramification I'll have periods of regular trimming, but I think it's important to give the tree periods of rest to extend growth and build up strength. There's no hard and fast answer for this. I think through time and experience you get better at judging how hard you can/should push a tree based on it's health, the species, the time of year, and your current growth goals. Hopefully that helps.

[Patmet]

Full prune. Good to see the branch structure again. It was super dense.

20240731_185513_1.jpg

Before

20240803_173130_1.jpg

After

[Patmet]

I've recently gone through and pruned this back after letting it elongate and gather up strength. This is in preparation for an upcoming exhibition in January. It's really starting to ramify now. It currently has no wire on but I'll do a little bit after the exhibition to tweak a few things.

20241213_153002_1.jpg

20241215_112640_1.jpg

20241215_112709_1.jpg

20241215_113229_1.jpg