This juniper was one of the first restyling adventures of my new apprentice, Patch Clark.
This is how the juniper came into the yard. I gave the design lead on the tree to Patch.
This was Patch’s instinct with the tree. I agreed. There is more activity in the trunk line, and the lean also increases its drama.
Patch did a whiteout of the design intention.
After the initial rework we took a look at it together. Patch asked if we might remove a few branches because it felt a bit heavy with all that foliage on a thin trunk. Thumbs up! A thin trunk not only looks best with less foliage, but less foliage only grows a thin trunk. (Conversely, if you have a thick trunk with thin foliage, the communication is that it is dying.)
We agreed on these branches to remove, indicated with “white-out” rags.
The juniper following branch removal and final tweaking. It is a simple tree, like many of our bonsai, but we enjoyed this restyling.