Bonsai in ten months

I hardly ever blog about bonsai I have done myself. In this post, I would like to talk about this particular Small-leaved Privet (Ligustrum sinense). What you see in the leftmost image was accomplished in ten months.

Although this tree requires further refinement, its basic shape is already in place. This plant was pulled out of the ground and given to me for free in August 2010. It was approximately 50 cm tall, with no fine roots and no leaves. During the following year I allowed one branch to grow freely to be the future upper trunk and kept all other brunches shorter. There was no styling of any sort at that stage. In October 2011, I chopped the trunk and wired two lowest brunches (see the trunk chop scar in the centre image). In the following months, I gradually wired the rest of the branches and pruned them to form the foliage pads. By August 2012 this tree looked pretty much as it looks in the images. So, the actual implementation of the basic design took only 10 months (Oct 2011 - Aug 2012). The tree was planted in the current training bonsai pot in March 2013 (left image). The height of the tree from apex to the rim of the pot is 17.5 cm. The rightmost image is not real. I used Photoshop to bring the pot into proportion with the tree. This is just to demonstrate the importance of planting your bonsai in a pot of appropriate size. In conclusion, the take home message here is: “For quick results use local weeds and make small trees”.