AusBonsai

I have found a spot to collect a few hawthorns

Nice find Cottie,

what do you have in mind for styling for this and the other hawthorns?

No firm plans yet, I'm just going to let them establish for a year or two. It will probably take that long to get all the thorns out of my hands.

Hawthorn make great bonsai. Tony Tickle who is coming to Canberra in March 2017 is a great exponent of this species and has a few good ideas on his blog site. I love these as well and the three you have dug are very good but they do need some recovery time before you start work on them.

Definitely agree on allowing the Hawthorn about 2 years to recover from the dig and gain vigour. Then cut off most of the branches to force all new ones and wire everything for the next couple of years, after which you might start to thin out the duplicates from exactly the same spot. Don't worry about bar branching at that point either, just utilise as much as you can.

In about 4 or 5 years time you can then start to judiciously remove some of the excess and obvious unwanted branches.

They are are great tree and your specimens look great.

Grant

Thanks for the replies, i have been following Tony Tickle on the net for a while. I especially love his hawthorn raft.