invite

i'm not a professional bonsai artist. I'm Just a amateur. I'm still going to bonsai classes.

I want to discuss this tree and style the tree with you. The plant is very weak and it wil probably DIE but maybe we can learn something from it.

I have chosen a front, but you have a say in it.
One rule if you make a suggestion or comment you have to give me at last one reasons why it's better or worse.

juniperus squamata (meyeri?)

I dug up this plant in the heat of the summer in 2016 from a garden and it was weak and still is. I'm treathing it for scale insects. I droped it and the pot broke.I am going to repot it. What front do you think?
(Lets forget the nebari this time)

I chose F. because of the movement and it's the most compact tree.

P.S
Please don't make post with, nice tree. i'm interested your motivation.

Probably A as it shows the curves in the trunk the best. Cascade does not really seem to work.

I would remove or reduce the jin on the left. It distracts from the trunk.
I would remove the two higher, dead branches, or reduce them a lot and make them jins.
The other branches - I cannot really see where they all are coming from. You couild bend them down strongly, giving them a few twists to bring the foliage closer to the trunk.

I would also go with A. B and C kill all the movement on the trunk, and D places the deadwood in the back, pulling the eye back, instead of up the trunk.

I also agree that cascade doesn't seem to suit the tree much, because of that upward turn that you can really see in G. Maybe you could make G work if you could get some buds on top, but I would go with A.

Though I really like the deadwood on the left of the trunk on A. Maybe a little shorter, but I wouldn't get rid of it all together. It fills in that negative space under the bend of the trunk in a very serene, liquid kind of way.

How about this? Turn A about 45 degrees clockwise, the branches in red are turned into jin, with maybe only the two on the left reduced. Bring the canopy down to about the blue line, and your foliage would end up in / around the orange triangle. You could either cut, and hope for budding. A better idea would be to bend the branch going over the blue line, down and forward in a "c" shape. So that they top of that branch ends up towards the right-most corner of the orange triangle. That way, the tree keeps the foliage, and doesn't loose too much energy from such a big prune / cut.



It ends up giving the tree a serpent / dragon look, with the head at the foliage and the tail at the bottom left.

Just my two cents though.

I would go with D as a front. But the foliage will be almost completely lost, as I would bring the foliage down / remove the foliage almost up to the point where the trunkline disappears into the foliage.Have most of the foliage on the left, with the right a yin, which accentuates the idea of an old tree with part of the canopy died-off.

I like D the most , I feel like the trunk and the foliage have more harmony together in this one

I like A most, and I agree that the long jin on the lower left could be shortened somehow; and the canopy also could be lowered, to make it more proportional.
But... It's guesswork and "I like/I don't like"exercise anyway.

Sorry for not continuing this post sooner, the tree went downhill fast but it survive with only 3 branches. today i put it in a pond basket and could not help myself to put a few wires in.

Orlando wrote: Sorry for not continuing this post sooner, the tree went downhill fast but it survive with only 3 branches.

Orlando, what happened?
It was looking sooo good!
Please keep us posted on this tree, even thinner now than before, it is still very interesting!

Maybe it is a bit unusual but it works for me. You have done very well laying out the foliage pads and creating the little tree. It looks almost like a japanese print. Well done.