Juniper Bonsai Rock Planting –
Josh takes you over his Juniper Bonsai Rock Planting and answers some questions people have had about this tree from social media. This video will give you a 360 degree look at the tree and how it was designed.
If you are a fan of Juniper Bonsai then you will love this video!
We’re going to be talking about this juniper mountain scene so stick around all right so this tree here has been getting quite a lot of interest of late that’s because i posted a photo of it where i was playing with the smoke machine trying to get the tree to look like it was sitting high up in the mountains within the clouds.
You would have seen that photo in the thumbnail of this video which is likely why you clicked on it now i’ve been getting a lot of questions people wanting to see the back of the tree see how it’s wrapped around the rock wanting to see pictures of the tree as it was developing and all that kind of stuff so today i thought i’d do a quick video and that way anybody who wanted to see more of the tree and have their questions answered we can do that here so as you can see this is just a juniper squamata this is usually people’s first tree here in australia i’m not sure overseas but i’m pretty sure the green mound juniper in america it’s the same kind of thing and i’m pretty sure that most people start out with something like this it’s a species of tree that kind of i don’t know it’s underrated i find them very good to work with and i think just because these usually are people’s first tree people tend to see them as a beginner tree so they don’t want to work with them but they’re a great species to work with and they make great bonsai so i’ve got quite a few of them in my personal collection as well as shinpaku juniper but i love this type of tree and it’s very easy to do stuff like this with and you can do rock plantings with them um they they’re great for all styles whether that’s informal upright cascading semi cascading slanting all those kinds of styles this tree adapts to really well so you know don’t be don’t be afraid to use these trees just because they’re somewhat seen as beginner trees okay so now this particular tree what i’ll do is we’ll move on over to the close-up camera and i’ll give you a spin of the tree and we can have a look how it’s wrapped around the rock now as you’ll notice it comes out of the comes out of the soil just here so that is right at the bottom of the rock and as you can see it is still in the nursery growing container and that’s because and i had quite a lot of comments about this saying that the tree would be much nicer if it wasn’t in this pot but you’ve got to understand this tree is not finished this tree is very much still in development and it’s a very important stage of bonsai if we skip the development process then we don’t have a tree that is as nice as what we could have so it’s still in this it’s still in a growing medium in a development medium it’s not in academia or pumice or anything like that it’s just in a regular potting mix so that’s to help us actually thicken the the main line in the trunk and also too because every branch on this tree has been styled as a tree rather than as a branch we really need to push thickness into these branches and i’m just not going to do that if i don’t grow it in this so that is the reason why it’s in this pot still but the rock some people have asked how far down does the rock go into the soil and it doesn’t go that far it’s literally almost just sitting on the surface it goes down just a little bit but it’s pretty much just sitting on the surface of the soil and you’ll know why that is later okay so the trunk comes out here just in front of the the rock and then as we spin around if we come in on the close-up cam here you can see the first tree here where it kind of emerges off the main trunk line here and that’s our first little informal upright tree so if we come back around to the front the main camera you can see a little informal upright tree here that comes off the side of the mountain so that comes around and that’s that’s the back of that and then as we move up through here there isn’t really much i do keep a little bit of growth on here just to keep the energy and movement up through here um and this will also thicken this area up a little bit too and it’ll it’ll clasp to the rock a little bit better but as you can see there’s really not much happening there but as we come around we’ve got this little branch here that shoots off into the rock the main line runs up through here but we’ve got this little branch just here now what that is is that’s actually these two little two little trees here up on the front of the rock and that little branch comes running up through here up through the rock itself and we’ve got one little tree here on the on the face and another little another little tree just here so that’s what that is but this main line continues up around the rock and then it comes around the front into this here this twists around and it junctions off so where it junctions off we have our cascade tree so i’ll have to come back to the main camera so we have our cascade little tree just here so i’ve tried to get a few different styles so we’ve got our informal upright and we’ve got our little cascade over here which is still developing i need to wire out the bottom part of this cascade again and you know it’s got a little apex up here and some little branches on the way down but as i said it’s still in development it’s still very young it’s got quite a few years to go this tree but from here as i said it junctions off and then it runs up into the top so if we come back to the main cam again then we’ve got a tree on on this side and you can see the top of the rock poking up through here so we’ve got a little tree here and then another little tree here now these two need a fair bit of work up here because they’ve just overgrown but at this point i’m just pulling the energy through the tree with all this foliage and once we get closer to actually moving this thing into refinement then i can trim these down a bit and give them a little bit more style a little bit more of that pad look that we’re used to with junipers so what’s the next step for this tree the next step is i’m actually looking to have a custom pot made for it because as you can imagine this tree is not going to suit any style of just regular bonsai pot and what i actually have in mind for it is somewhat of a landscape pot and i have already spoken to a custom pop maker about this and he has some ideas about what we can do but we’re thinking about doing a plot that kind of slants down like this down to the ground and then we can um whether we’re going to plant moss or whatever it may be we still haven’t decided the details are very sketchy yet it might even just be a big rock that comes all the way up to here and then matches this rock that is in the tree and continues on but the whole point of the the pot coming down like this is to replicate the side of a mountain and then this tree is up on top of the mountain and then we’re pretty much going to have the part of the tree is going to be molded off one of these pots so i can just slip pot it straight in but once i slip plot it in i actually will do some root work and replace it with akadama and pumice that way i can start doing some refinement work on the tree but that’s not going to be until maybe spring this year i’ll see how happy i am with the thickness of the tree come spring if i’m happy with where everything is at and how it’s developed i’ll move it on if not it’ll stay in this for another year while we continue to develop it on but besides that if you want to know about the rock it is just made of concrete this is actually made out of a mold so some people i know make these rocks and then they leave them out for two years just to let everything seep out of them and to get some patina and age on them so it doesn’t just look like a slab of concrete in there but they are actually very nice rocks and as you can see it’s worked fantastically for this little juniper but that’s it for today if you do have any questions about this particular tree leave them in the comments below and i’ll try and get back to you i might actually put some photos of this tree up while it was developing over on the bonsai and premium blog so if you’d like to sign up for that it’s only five bucks a month and you get a whole bunch of stuff that other people don’t get here on the youtube channel you get educational articles so i’ll leave a link to the description i’ll leave a link to that in the description down below get my words all mixed up there and also i’ll leave a link so you can get your very own merchandise like i’m wearing here every sale of that merchandise actually supports this channel and helps us grow so we really do appreciate appreciate you guys support but until next time enjoy your bonsai journey
