To help see asymmetrical planting position in repotting, use a chopstick to find the center of mass for the lower trunk and nebari. The chopstick shows more easily where it is, right or left, in the pot. Then adjust placement. This placement is good for a right flow tree.
Japanese Maples at a client’s place. We grew these from airlayers 15-18 years ago.
This White Pine is new to the yard. It was owned by someone in an internment camp. Carmen Leskoviansky did an initial styling reset and we have a Tokutake custom pot on order for it, but will feature this in its own blog post, maybe next year.
Just a fun view of a Japanese Maple at repotting time.
Bag pots get a bad rap for their challenge at repotting time. Which is understandable, it is tiring work to extricate the tree. In their defense, they provide a good grounding for a low tree with a sizable trunk. This one is a middle crossing pot, antique Chinese.
Shore Pine with several needle buds popping.
This is an adventitious bud, same tree.
Either can create a viable new shoot.
Lastly, a styling decision we can make around repotting time. At this time we don’t wire much. But we can cut things off…
The weak low branch above did not appear to have a future for this design. To compact the design and refocus on the interesting trunk, we cut it back. This still needs detailing work but that can be done later in the year.