Procumbens Juniper Styling Progression
Posted: November 8th, 2014, 11:32 am
This is a procumbens juniper that I purchased from my favourite nursery in South Sydney in September 2013.
An extremely healthy tree on purchase, with a mass/mess (in a good way) of branches.
The first step was to select a front and then open up the front a bit so that I could see what was going on.
The next step was to remove some of the unwanted mass. Rather than fixing an end result in my head and aiming for it, I tried to follow the form of the tree and keep/remove branches as worked for this particular trunk.
There were several significant branches of which I was unsure, so left them on for further consideration, rather than being hasty. Over the ensuing period, I have gone back and successively removed most of these (my gut was right, it would seem).
Once I had removed the unwanted branches, I wired the lower half of the tree (just the main branch lines) to start to get a feel for where the design would end up.
I wired a little too tight and ended up removing all of the wire in June 2014 (less than 1 year later).
This growing season, the tree has burst into new growth and is now rather bushy. Today (November 2014) I have removed one of those branches that had been troubling me, being a set of three connected branches which came off at the first substantial bend on the right side of the trunk. I felt that they were filling what would otherwise be some nice negative space that would help to highlight the movement in the trunk at that level.
The planting angle that I think works best is to tilt the tree slightly to the right, to give it a bit more balance. However, I was about to set to and wire the whole tree properly when I thought to play one final time with the planting angle, tipping the tree on its side. Interesting.
Now, before wiring the tree and setting the branches in their permanent place, I thought to check with the brains trust and see which position people thought was better.
I look forward to hearing.
An extremely healthy tree on purchase, with a mass/mess (in a good way) of branches.
The first step was to select a front and then open up the front a bit so that I could see what was going on.
The next step was to remove some of the unwanted mass. Rather than fixing an end result in my head and aiming for it, I tried to follow the form of the tree and keep/remove branches as worked for this particular trunk.
There were several significant branches of which I was unsure, so left them on for further consideration, rather than being hasty. Over the ensuing period, I have gone back and successively removed most of these (my gut was right, it would seem).
Once I had removed the unwanted branches, I wired the lower half of the tree (just the main branch lines) to start to get a feel for where the design would end up.
I wired a little too tight and ended up removing all of the wire in June 2014 (less than 1 year later).
This growing season, the tree has burst into new growth and is now rather bushy. Today (November 2014) I have removed one of those branches that had been troubling me, being a set of three connected branches which came off at the first substantial bend on the right side of the trunk. I felt that they were filling what would otherwise be some nice negative space that would help to highlight the movement in the trunk at that level.
The planting angle that I think works best is to tilt the tree slightly to the right, to give it a bit more balance. However, I was about to set to and wire the whole tree properly when I thought to play one final time with the planting angle, tipping the tree on its side. Interesting.
Now, before wiring the tree and setting the branches in their permanent place, I thought to check with the brains trust and see which position people thought was better.
I look forward to hearing.