My son decided we needed a Cypress in our collection so visited our favorite garden nurseries to see what was available last week. He chose a Chamaecyparis obtusa ' Spiralis ' which is a nice dwarf upright Japanese Hinoki Cypress. Deep green leaves on tight stems on an upright narrow plant. The variety was found around 1939 in England. He will be styling it today with a good friend from the club who has several really nice specimens of Hinoki. His young son will be joining us but I think he'll be swimming while the tree is worked on. Here is a before picture of the pre-bonsai stock material in the nursery pot and a closeup of the foliage. JRob

Sorry all. I forgot to post the after tree from last weekend. Young but not bad for a $10.00 investment on Shimsuki's part. JRob

Good question.

What I do when I'm cleaning up nursery material, or overgrown bonsai, is first clean out everything that's dead. Then I take out branches that I know I don't need, such as armpit branches and small branches growing at the bottom of the trunk. Once that is done I can usually see the basic structure of the tree and make design choices based on what I see.

Shim

Flew my son home from Yale to spend the weekend working on trees. Friday we worked alone with a club friend and on Sat and Sunday he worked with Hagedorn and the STL Study Group. On friday before Michael got in town Shimsuki spent some time potting this up and several forest plantings. Here is his current vision for the tree. The rock has a few more pockets and he is searching for some extremely small leafed satsuki to add to the composition.  JRob

I like the composition of this planting.  I can imagine a few smaller plants interspersed on the rock might improve things.  Will watering them become a problem though?  (I don't know the water requirements of a hinoki.  Are they similar to Satsuki?)

Nice progression