I literally just did this today. Found a nice Juniper with some crazy branch curls for $9 at Home Depot. Took a couple of hours to clean it up, remove all the dead stuff & prune out all the overgrowth. The trunk was perfect underneath with about 6 or 7 nice horizontal leads coming off with no center. Wired it up & got a nice glazed bonsai pot for $9. It turned out spectacular & looks like a wind swept ocean tree. I saw some bonsai junipers at my local bonsai nursery that were half the size for $179-$200. Total cost for mine was less than $25 including everything. I love shopping the big stores for bargains I can turn into nice bonsai.
This was a good video! I think the big takeaway for me is how ridiculous it is that places try to sell really juvenile juniper cuttings as "bonsai" for like $50.
And ppl buy them and display on Facebook bonsai groups as finished bonsai with captions like even tho it's winter I'm putting moss spores so it'll moss up nicely in a month or two and I don't need to style at all since it's already a bonsai .meanwhile the tree looks like a whip wired into a question mark .
The funniest part is if you take that $50 and buy a couple of landscaping trees that are juveniles, with a little work, you are often closer to a respectable bonsai and you get a few for the same price. Only new bonsai enthusiasts think bonsai is about a completed tree rather than the long journey towards perfection.
@@IgnacioAtenas The whole concept of Bonsai is to create and follow rules that are meant for guide lines. Anyone can go out an buy a "Bonsai" but its the creation from ones one mind and hands that set people apart.
@@musicointempero2256 Funny thing is you can buy a respectable sized tree in a large pot for about £20. You get the advantage then of a thicker trunk and you can take lots of cuttings. £50 is too much for a juvenile that's not well developed. Mind you, I'd pay £50 or much much more if it's well developed and the person clearly has taken care and knows what they're doing
I like the foliage on that juniper. It reminds me of that of your cedars. Excellent start, can't wait to see how it grows over the next year (and beyond!)
I liked the process and the result. You are one of the few who styles conifers in a natural way. And I missed having breakfast with your videos. You're great, dear Nigel
This is true serendipity. You went looking for a group of Thujas and found a wonderful juniper. If it prospers, that tree is going to be a high point of your collection.
I am really interested to watch a juniper develop as clip and grow. Only ever see it as a wired plant, so this will be fun to see over the coming years - assuming it lives!
I wish I could share pics of my clearance junipers. They were $9.99 superior junipers. I was inspired by a Dragon tattoo I had seen. It now looks like dragons talons in a wind swept styling. Your videos are quite enjoyable Nigel. Thanks for sharing your gardens. From somewhere in the midwest, 🇺🇸 between Chicago and Milwaukee.
Awesome. I love junipers and have killed my fair share. I know now a lot more. I just cannot buy one in summer and repot and prune in hot temps. Being in cool climate provides lots of freedom. Love your channel And your bonsai style.
I should have gone to see the nurseries before the outdoor plant section closed... This video didn't help a bit! I want to prune something!!! :D The trunkline is very nice, can't wait to see future updates on this lil fella!
Ive only ever seen Junipers with wire for days, so im super keen to see how a clip and grow approach works on this species! Good work Nigel, good tree for $12 😁👍
Awesome video Nigel. I just bought a gold juniper and did a Bonzai with it. This video helped me to learn to trim for structure. I will be starting my own videos soon, hope to see a view from you!
Nice work Nigel. I've been looking for some decent nursery stock and so much of it here in the US is over priced. I did find Blue Star juniper for $10 but was looking for a Sand Cherry. I better go back for the Blue Star but thanks for the video. What you're doing is exactly what I will be doing and with you vocalizing the process really helps me..
Best video I've seen yet, I'm 60 and going to try my first tree, find an old hippy if you want to do it right. None of the others went into finding the base of the root. Peace.
Metode ini sangat bermanfaat, saya banyak belajar dari itu, terima kasih banyak dengan tips yang diberikan tuan, salam satu hoby, jabat persahabatan dan berkarya adalah Seni 🙏😊☕
Looks great. Thats a hell of alot of stored energy you removed though, I doubt it will do much for a very long time. Junipers store the energy in their foliage rather than in their roots or super structure. I'm pretty sure he knows this but others might not. Sometimes when designing junipers you have to leave some branches with foliage on that you want to remove to be removed at a later date if you have taken alot off already. The tree will recover its energy stores quicker and start growing sooner, correcting the root to foliage ratio. Sometimes you have to do it just so the plant will survive. It hard cos you want it looking good from the off but you can remove it later and you will be much further along.
@@DOOMBASSIST4 'Pretty sure' i said in my comment that he knows this 'lol'. An that it was for others such as new comers to bonsai, even if I hadn't said it outright in my comment I would of thought that was obvious 'lol'
@@DOOMBASSIST4 yea cos talking about how different plants store energy is a flex... It was info I didn't know when I first started and is pretty helpful.
Great start to a new project, Nigel! Be careful in the future with cutting the foliage. I would not touch that juniper for a year at least. Intense pruning will get you juvenile foliage (similar to normal needle juniper foliage) and it's hard to get the mature (cedar like foliage) back. Also junipers have a lot of growth hormones in the tips of the branches, intense pinching will weaken the tree. I've started almost 2 years ago a 'blue chip' juniper, extremely similar to yours, and I've cut a lot at once and a year and a half later it still has the juvenile foliage produced as a reaction to my lack of knowledge.
Some juniper's mature foliage stay quite spikey depending on the variety. for instance, Blue Star juniper will never develop that soft mature foliage. It will take very long for it to develop for things like Procumbens, and Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana). There's also varieties that will grow mature foliage very easily like Juniperus Chinensis, and San Jose Junipers that produce mature foliage very easily compared to others. There are a lot of factors that go into it, but it's mainly about the ratio of foliage to roots, which is something you should wait until you get to a point closer to the refinement stage, after you have already developed it to the design you had in mind for the tree. Also, pruning off the tips of the branches is good for encouraging back budding, which can be very useful, depending on what you want the tree to do. He definitely did the right thing in my opinion as far as pruning off that much foliage. You don't want the tree wasting it's resources on branches you aren't going to keep (other than letting sacrificial branches grow to help make the tree thicker.)
@@yung_bonsai I 100% agree that Nigel did a great job with the initial styling! As you said, there is a fine equilibrium between the roots and the foliage when it comes to junipers. I've listened to Bjorn's podcast, Bonsai Network, and he cited a study about the balance of root hormones and growth hormones (that helps the foliage direct itself towards the light, regulate a bunch of things etc.) . His conclusion was that you should definitely not hedge prune your juniper to shape. And also, junipers have an evolutionary response to big amounts of foliage gone missing at once. It is believed that the juvenile foliage is a form of self-preservation against wild animals. Disclaimer: I am a noobie when it comes to horticulture but I try to learn from where I can.
Great stuff can be accomplished from raw material, a few nice opportunities missed to create “shari” and “Jin” from the initial trim, but a great video nonetheless. Thank you for sharing
