AusBonsai

Two years ago I planted Celtis africana seeds in little pots. They germinated 1-3 trees in a pot. Last spring I put the trees together in a forest setting and let them grow freely up to now.

The forest before the chop back:
After the chop:
After defoliation:
Any advice, especially on the placement of the trees, will be appreciated.

Lennard

Hi Lennard,

The basics of forrest placement are as follows:

1.) Try to keep all trees visible from the front, and from the side. Basically, don't plant trees one behind another or side by side. With a large number of trees this gets tricky!

2.) Decide whether you want one clump of trees, or whether you are going to plant trees in distinct groupings. I have a small forest of about 11 celtis, and in mine, I made a path between them to try to give it a bit more character.

3.) If you go for groupings, try to keep them to odd numbers of trees. This is far more important if the groups have smaller numbers. I would argue that after 5 or 7 trees, it makes little difference. I would however avoid 2,4 and possibly 6 in a clump.

4.) Try to fatten a few of the trees up as having trees of differing thichnesses and sizes gives a feeling of depth. Bigger trees at the front and smaller trees at the back. Some may argue that you need a single tree that is the prime tree and typically this is the largest and most dominant tree. I think this works well, but also depends on the design you do.

5.) I find that angling the outside trees outward a bit gives a natural look. These trees would have grown that way, searching for light from the edge of the forest. With your existing planting, you can probably achieve this by just pulling a few side trees out a bit and holding them with string until their roots adjust.

6.) Try to make the ground surface uneven. It adds interest.

That's about all I can think of for now.

I think the forest you have there has character. It will of course improve with time. Finally, get it into a nice shallow pot. With thin trees like that, it will look so much more believable. You will probably need to wait for spring to do that.

Thanks for all the information, Andrew. I will definitely follow the guidelines.

At this stage the two tree in orange are the biggest but not the ones in the front. The trees indicated by yellow are in front but they are smaller.

The blue indicate the "path" and the purple where I need another tree.
I have boosted my trees to delay winter rest by giving them a hydroponics fertilizer mix and some cattle grade ureum Ureum is pure 46% nitrogen and by moving the trees against a wall that receives sun the whole day. This will give me time up to May to still work on this little forest. Will update then.

Here is a 100 tree Celtis forest that Org Exley has put together. Wonder how he followed the rules for a forest!
Lennard

You sounds like a man with a plan! Maybe let the two bigger trees grow a bit more unchecked than the others.

I think the fewer trees one uses in a forest planting, the more important the "rules" become. When you have as many as Org, I think the rules become semantics, but you also run the risk of ending up with something a bit messy. I am not saying that his planting is messy, because it is difficult to pass opinion on something like that without seeing it in the flesh. Again, hard to comment without seeing it in the flesh, but I feel his foliage comes down too low. You want to try to create the feeling of trunks and depth, and in a natural forest one tends to see a defined canopy. The lack thereof in his planting make me see a young forest.

I think with group plantings its very important for the main tree to be head and shoulders above the rest of the trees, and for the trunk thicknesses to vary as much as possible. It seems to me you have been a little premature putting them together and would have a much more convincing group it you grew them separately for a couple of years and allowed the main tree to get much bigger.
Craigw

Andrew Legg wrote: The lack thereof in his planting make me see a young forest.

I should have mentioned that Org's forest was put together this spring so he did not do any work on it- he just left the trees to grow and settle.

He has a few other nice forest settings that he is working on:
My own forest I want to keep very small - in my head I have a forest like the one in the Kevin Costner movie, Robin Hood. The lower branches growing to the light must be light and sparsely branched with very little foliage. The canopy can be denser - but not so dense that the lower branches don't receive any light.

Lennard

craigw60 wrote:I think with group plantings its very important for the main tree to be head and shoulders above the rest of the trees, and for the trunk thicknesses to vary as much as possible. It seems to me you have been a little premature putting them together and would have a much more convincing group it you grew them separately for a couple of years and allowed the main tree to get much bigger.
Craigw

Thanks for the reply, Graig.

I attended a workshop/demonstration on forest planting last spring and there I saw how severely Celtis roots can be cut back. Before this I was too afraid to work on Celtis roots and I wanted to skip the part of cutting back roots so severely - now I know better.

I will let one or two of the trunks thicken up a bit to give the idea of old and young trees.

Here is a setting from Org again showing the one big tree and a lot of smaller ones(the planting is young so again he has not worked much on it) - for me I think the main tree is too overpowering:
Lennard

I think the main tree in that group is good its just that the rest of them are so much smaller and there are way too many of them. If you have access to John Naka's book bonsai techniques there are some fantastic diagrams for group settings in it.
Craigw

Another from me.

That last planting is not balanced. I think what you need to try to achieve in a forest planting is balance. Here I think you need to differentiate between a clump and a forest. I would imagine a clump to have a grouping of trees of similar ages (maybe I am worng), and a forest to have a bigger viriation in tree sizes/ages. The point of having differing thickness trunks is to create a sense of perspective of dept to the planting. the idea is that the thicker trees appear to be close to the viewer, and that the thinner trees are those deeper into the forest and further from the viewer. This last photo does not achieve this as there is no gradual transition from thick trunks to thin ones.

Finally, a successful forest must be carefully planned if it is to look convincing.

Andrew is spot on in all points variation in height thickness and spacings are the key to a good group, also continuity of movement. The best way to achieve a good group is to grow the trees separately or in clumps of 2-3 trees, and have in your mind a very clear picture of where they will fit into the composition.

I like the second one very much !

Thanks for all the time guys showing me the way. I do have about 25 5 year old Celtis africana trees of different thicknesses and heights in plastic pots. In spring I will start work on their roots and how I will incorporate them in a forest setting.

I will keep the small forest planting and see if I can make a convincing forest of it.

Lennard

guys i did a trident maple forest about 18 months ago it was my very first forest i did with 7 trees and a water feature at the rear to give it more of a forest setting dean

dragon wrote: guys i did a trident maple forest about 18 months ago it was my very first forest i did with 7 trees and a water feature at the rear to give it more of a forest setting dean

I like these scenes! The road is a little bit too bumpy! Smaller stones going from bigger to smaller would be better! One day I want to create a whole city park scene with lawns, trees, flowers, benches. paths and even a hotdog stand!

Lennard