Bodhi Acer palmatum forest (BODHI ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD 2012)

[Stewart_Toowoomba]

Nice trees Ryan
I put a little Maple forest together this year from last years seedlings too. Maybe we can have a comp against each other and se how the progress over the next few years
Ps this is the first forest I have done

PPS, Just realised yours are Trident Maple. Mine are Japanese

Ken

Great progress Ryan - well deserving of the prize too!

Ken i just love the gentle movement / tilt you've given to your forest . I tend to go too gun ho when giving something a lean and then need some corection down the track. Yours show up that less is best.

Lovely

[cre8ivbonsai]

Thanks Stewart

[cre8ivbonsai]

The 40 degree heat wave we suffered through earlier this year impacted this forest with some minor brach dieback and two of the trees coping heat stroke and dying off. Unfortunately one of them a larger front tree . Subsequently the group had a full defoliation. I left the victims in situ for now as the roots are intertwined and hard to extract without distubance. Regrowth has been lush and strong so yesterday gave them a trim and hoping I can get a bit of autumn colour this year. The group will now need recomposition and replacements, so looks like I'll be back up at Bodhidarma before repotting and hopefully find some suitable sibling replacements .

[cre8ivbonsai]

Update: rearranged and repotted into a smaller pot, this is the first flush of leaves (which are large), I aim to defoliate and trim late spring ...

[EdwardH]

Hi Ryan, you certainly don't hold back when you rearrange a setting!
I really love the pot though I am a bit concerned about how the trees will cope with the high summer temperatures Are you able to place the setting in a shady spot over the summer months?

[cre8ivbonsai]

Hi Ryan, you certainly don't hold back when you rearrange a setting!
I really love the pot though I am a bit concerned about how the trees will cope with the high summer temperatures Are you able to place the setting in a shady spot over the summer months?

Hi Edward, I see the aim with most bonsai is to get them into a smaller / shallower pot. Sometimes large pots can be worse in extreme heat because even when you water a lot of water can stay in the pot heat up and start 'boiling' the roots.

This forest will be fine over summer and hopefully we'll see some colour in autumn

[kcpoole]

Shibui repots deciduous trees all year round, so suspect these should be OK
I would have liked to see the tallest tree a little off centre though. I think it might be a little more interesting rather than symmetrical.

Ken

[kcpoole]

forgot to add that I repotted mine a few weeks ago too. Although I did not rearrange the position of each tree, but i had one die off that had to be removed.
Updated pic in leaf today, Likewise thaes are rathe4r large leaves and it will need to be defoliated to reduce them IMHO.

Ken

[cre8ivbonsai]

Shibui repots deciduous trees all year round, so suspect these should be OK
I would have liked to see the tallest tree a little off centre though. I think it might be a little more interesting rather than symmetrical.

Ken

Hi Ken, tallest is just a fraction off-centre, and with more trees clustered to the left the main tree, and less and smaller trees on the right, in design speak, the weight of mass is on the left ... this makes it asymmetrical. One of the main things was fitting all the roots and trunks as close as possible, in which fairly hard root pruning was required, but this configuration was the best fit. I do like forest settings that have the main trees next to a gap. I saw this setting as two groups 5 and 3, and I think, set in this dispersion, 8 is the minimum even number of tree that can work as a group. Though I acknowledge the canopy will need to grow up to meet the apex of the tallest tree.

forgot to add that I repotted mine a few weeks ago too. Although I did not rearrange the position of each tree, but i had one die off that had to be removed.
Updated pic in leaf today, Likewise thaes are rathe4r large leaves and it will need to be defoliated to reduce them IMHO.

Ken

Do you have any future plans for your forest?