Azalea
Posted: October 16th, 2017, 6:53 pm
I think this azalea has a little potential so it has been reserved for the Shibui Bonsai collection.
It was collected from a garden before the builders started work on an extension. It has had about 3 years to recover and establish in the box. You can see some preliminary shaping has already been done. That was a demo at Canberra Bonsai show 12 months ago. You can see that it has sprouted back well after that initial pruning and flowered profusely. Now it is time to take it a bit further.
Not only does it have a good chunky trunk, it also has nice small flowers.
There's no hard rules about when to cut back your azaleas. I could have left this for another few weeks but as Sir Theodore said at our last club meeting the flowers are only delaying the development. The sooner I cut it the sooner it will shoot and start to ramify so off with all the flowers so I can see what's there.
After a few distractions with visitors and work I got down to details. I could see a strong left leaning tree in the bones of this azalea so that's how I'm attempting to style it. you may be able to pick out the stumps where I've sawn off some large trunks that were going against the flow and the twine I put on last year to pull another trunk around further to the left. Even though it was quite thick and stiff that branch has set in position after 12 months.
I've tried to remove most of the shoots that grow against the flow of the trunks but I still need some to hang flowers on. I've shortened all the remaining shoots to promote plenty of density in the branches I've chosen to leave. Hope it will be enough to give a good show of flowers while still showing the bones of the tree.
There's still work to be done. The back branch growing from the left trunk is quite thick and straight. I'm hoping to be able to shorten it substantially at some stage. Also the large stump on the right side of the base will need to be reduced. I'm taking that slowly to reduce the possibility of losing roots after removing such a large branch.
Now I really need a pot to put it in. Any suggestions for style, colour or shape?
It was collected from a garden before the builders started work on an extension. It has had about 3 years to recover and establish in the box. You can see some preliminary shaping has already been done. That was a demo at Canberra Bonsai show 12 months ago. You can see that it has sprouted back well after that initial pruning and flowered profusely. Now it is time to take it a bit further.
Not only does it have a good chunky trunk, it also has nice small flowers.
There's no hard rules about when to cut back your azaleas. I could have left this for another few weeks but as Sir Theodore said at our last club meeting the flowers are only delaying the development. The sooner I cut it the sooner it will shoot and start to ramify so off with all the flowers so I can see what's there.
After a few distractions with visitors and work I got down to details. I could see a strong left leaning tree in the bones of this azalea so that's how I'm attempting to style it. you may be able to pick out the stumps where I've sawn off some large trunks that were going against the flow and the twine I put on last year to pull another trunk around further to the left. Even though it was quite thick and stiff that branch has set in position after 12 months.
I've tried to remove most of the shoots that grow against the flow of the trunks but I still need some to hang flowers on. I've shortened all the remaining shoots to promote plenty of density in the branches I've chosen to leave. Hope it will be enough to give a good show of flowers while still showing the bones of the tree.
There's still work to be done. The back branch growing from the left trunk is quite thick and straight. I'm hoping to be able to shorten it substantially at some stage. Also the large stump on the right side of the base will need to be reduced. I'm taking that slowly to reduce the possibility of losing roots after removing such a large branch.
Now I really need a pot to put it in. Any suggestions for style, colour or shape?
Shibui