Online workshops - Juniper

[Matt S]

With the current situation we obviously haven't been able to attend club meetings and workshops but I've been pleased to see how various clubs have been keeping in touch with their members. The S.A. Bonsai Society have been experimenting with various platforms (including tonight's meeting via Zoom) and the one I've enjoyed the most is the weekly demonstrations I've been running on Saturday mornings from my living room. It's been great to see peoples faces again and to talk about trees with fellow enthusiasts, and using Zoom is really easy so the participation amongst attendees is pretty high.

Last Saturday I grabbed a Juniper that's been bugging me for ages - the trunk is quite interesting for a literati but there were too many branches and the direction made the tree look top heavy and unbalanced.

We had a really good discussion about what worked and what didn't and in the end we came up with a plan and I was pretty happy with the result. What was interesting was how eager people were to see so many branches removed. As Shibui observed recently, it's easier to go hard on trees that don't belong to you, so there were constant encouraging cries of "cut it off!" and "take off more!".

Nothing replaces a workshop in person but these sessions have been really well received and they've been a lot of fun. Anyway here is the tree, before and after.

Juniper demo May 2020 before.jpg

Juniper demo May 2020 after again.jpg

[boom64]

Sounds like a lot of fun Matt and a good result as well . A lot more interesting line. Cheers John.

[MJL]

100% better ... and another example of what I call a 'hanging branch' - adding visual interest and intrigue (to my eye anyway). Hard to make these reasonably common trees look interesting and that you have. Top job.