Last year in December (on my Birthday actually) I went on a road trip to Queensland which included a trip to Stephen and Dianne Rawkins nursery, Australian Bonsai Grower.
While there I picked up half a dozen different species of ficus including the following White Bark Retusa.
It needed to be trunk chopped to fit in the back of the car and Steve was kind enough to let me borrow his saw for the task. Funny how you don't get the same reaction when trunk chopping trees at a standard nursery
Unfortunately I don't have any shots of it before the chop but it was in a standard 12 inch pot and was approximately 1.2 meters tall.
In early January the roots and branches were severely cut back to barely anything. Oh bugger as Pup would say... no photo! It was planted high into a training pot with sphagnum moss around the base of the trunk to try and encourage some more roots. There was already a decent start but I wanted some more to fill in the gaps.
It recovered really well and powered on with new growth almost immediately. It has sat on my bench until now soaking up the sun and occasionally having some wayward growth clipped.
This is how it looked last week;
Last Friday afternoon I defoliated;
and on Sunday I trimmed a few obviously unwanted branches then wired ready for styling;
Before I style it on Wednesday night, I would be interested to hear different opinions for how you think it should look.
Critique, opinions, comments (good and bad), virts etc are all welcome.
Thanks for reading,
Steven
Pup
