Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Thuja with one 'branch'

Todaj I want to show you my thuja - thuja smargd. I got it in 2006 in a common tree nursery, near my home. It vas nothing special. An ordinarily grown tree.


The moment I brought it home I shortened it from 2,5 meters to a bit more then one meter.


The next step was done in summer 2007 when I made some shari on the trunk and made the basic branch selection. All the other branches were cut off.


'Sadly' not everything went as it should, and the whole tree but one branch had died. So, I could not do els as to carve the trunk and try to figure out another design. Slowely I realized that this style will be much better. That was in 2008.


In the next year - 2009 - I repotted it into this top japaneese pot, which is probably the final one and made some refinement work on the shari with some help of Enrico Savini.


Over the year I let it grow freely to have as much fine branches when I will style the crown.


This year (2010) the time of styling finally came. The main problem vas the trunk (a branch once), because it wasn't bent enough.
I didn't want to risk braking it, so I used a different methood. Firstly I holowed the part of the trunk that I wanted to bend. Then I put some thick aluminium wire into the hollow, straped it into rafia and plastic tape and bend it.
All it had to be done next was wiring.



And here I am prowdly showing you my finished tree. When the crown gets denser, it will be a prize-winning tree.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Prize winning indeed.

MapleTree said...

Hi,

nice work, and all this in few years, congratulation!!!

I had the same problem, I cut off the branches (nearly to zero) and so the thuja could not live anymore(but this works with a maple for example).
This is a very good development serie, I like such series too.
Can you take some photos (close up) from the shari, I would like to learn this carving style. How long did it take to carve it out?

Best Regards
Attila

Nik Rozman said...

Hi Attila,

The carving, that I compleeted in a few steps, alltogether (carving, working with a torch and aplying lime solphour) took me about 6 hours, maby a bit more.

Nik