Last week our bonsai society had a special meeting on spruce bonsai. Harvey Carapella, Marc Arpag and I presented simultaneous demonstrations, in addition to a formal display of one of our personal spruce bonsai.
Harvey worked on refining an old Ezo spruce bonsai. Marc showed how to make the initial design selection on a large spruce. While I worked on redesigning and wiring a neglected spruce bonsai from a workshop over 25 years ago.
My spruce was a phoenix graft of a young Black hills spruce attached to a piece of old dead wood. The spruce seedling was finger sized when nailed to the dead wood. It grew! However, the dead wood did not change size, it only added more patina to the dead wood. The workshop tree sat in the back of the garden and was only watered and fertilized for 25 years. It was repotted once. None of the top growth was touched, except for light pinching, now and then.
Before demo
I selected this tree because the thin Black hills spruce trunk grew so heavy. Actually, I want to sell it, but the beauty was not apparent. It did have “inner beauty” in my eyes, AND I knew how to ‘fix’ it. The two hour club demo provided me an opportunity to refine the bonsai.
Brian Whitcomb helped me use the heavy wire and Dave Steele provided the muscle for moving drastic branches. It took us two hours to create the shape of this tree, while Harvey and Marc were explaining their demos. I also participated in the group discussion.
The demo spruce looked like this immediately after the demo. It took us over an hour to refine the shape and do some additional wiring the next day.
Then the three of us adventured to the attic where a few containers are kept in a crowded mess. And, I only fell two times and Dave picked me up, dusted me off and I proceeded. After some time we selected seven “possible” new containers. Most were the right size, one was too small and one was too large. This process, selecting, discussing and trying each container and photographing the various combinations took us about one hour and thirty minutes.
Final shape before potting and selecting container
We finally agreed on the perfect container and yesterday Brian and Dave repotted the tree, then another 30 minutes we spent adjusting the branches and trunk position.
We were lucky I had many containers to select from to narrow it down to only seven. (Not really lucky, as most of the containers are in my personal taste and preferred sizes, shapes and colors.)
Before demo After demo, adjust
Before demo After demo, adjustments & potting
Take a look at each combination and let us know your personal selection and why. Best to answer on Facebook for easy posting.
We all enjoyed this exercise and the final composition came out just how I had expected. Now a new owner must care and refine this spruce bonsai.
