AusBonsai

OK, here's my entry for the forest competition. This entry is of a few very basic seedlings that I picked up from bunnings of all places. I had decided to make my partner a small ficus forest for her desk at work as she liked the leaf pattern, especially the starlight variety.

The inspiration for this forest comes from my time living in FNQ and the curtain and cathedral fig trees near Cairns. I'll never make anything as spectacular as them with these cheap specimens but I had some great ideas for a centre piece to the forest and if all goes well then maybe it'll turn out 20% as well as it looks in my head. But I'm trying a few different ideas for the pièce de resistance, and I'll pick whatever looks best and fits in with the rest of the forest.

Currently have bought a couple of ficus benjimina saplings and one retusa (I think it is) which I'll be trying something different with. All in a small planter to beef up a bit the rest of the summer and winter. I also have one other benjimina sapling (not pictured) but the same age, which is currently in a humidity chamber as one of my ideas. Hope that is not against comp rules.

Welcome to the comp Simonsays. Not sure where you’re located now but the thongs in the background may suggest your still close to water.
Good luck with your ficus forest.


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Located in Melbourne now so not exactly tropical. Nice sleuthing skills though

Little update on my focus forest,

Had a fair bit of thickening over winter where I kept them inside. Put some bends into the trunks which really seems to encourage them to thicken up well. Not sure if it's too much bend for a forest setting but I guess I'll find out in a few years. Might end up a Halloween twisted focus forest.

Gave the retusa I was training as a root over rock centrepiece to a friend as I had too many plants and not enough space, had maybe gotten a little over ambitious with just my little balcony area. And a few of the weaker plants from the planter gave up the ghost where they didn't have a strong enough root system after being split from the larger plants they came with.

All in all, the ficus seem to be going well. They've been outside full time since the start of spring and starting to kick on now with some new growth.