Tridents Everywhere

[MJL]

More Shibui Offspring. Thanks Neil.

It was great to pick up my bundle of tridents at the Bonsai North West show earlier today. What a wonderful show too. Fantastic.

And Neil, thank you for your trees too. Oh, the places we'll go!

Firstly the unwrapping ...

IMG_1092.jpg

Then a closer look

IMG_1097.jpg

I reckon the spread tree age here is about 4-5 years growing difference between the oldest and youngest trees; a nice spread for a forest and trees of different widths. I should be able to create a logical forest story or stories over time.

For now, some rough design. Indeed, hardly design really - more just settling the trees into a grow box. Cutting inches off some roots on those bigger trees and also shortening. In truth, I love tall and slender deciduous forests but here I need some more taper too - so I chopped back more severely than I have the past past.

In the end, this may be one, two or even three groups/forests.

Indeed, if I am being totally ridiculous I can picture up to five groups on one large tray - but hey, there I go again, letting my mind and ambition getting way ahead of my skills!!

As I say, rough only below and I have not worried about fanning trees out. That can happen at latter plantings. Also, I do like the roots to inform/push with this process too - I have written about that in a seperate thread, I think it creates a natural look over time. Anyway - I won't labour that idea here.

A few photos.

Nominal Back (below)

IMG_1104.jpg

Nominal Front (below)

IMG_1100.jpg

Side Profile (below: this could almost be a front too; there's a lot of depth here)

IMG_1101.jpg

Front Again (below)

IMG_1099.jpg

So... settle little trees. A cool future awaits ...hopefully!

Time now to grow healthily and I will work on design, shape, branching and ramification later.

[TimS]

What a great selection of material there to work with into the future Mark! Really nice spread of different thicknesses and sizes for you to work with.

It might seem crazy to use them all in one forest, but i think that there is a lot of merit to that idea:

First of all it gives you more latitude to allow yourself not to focus on the 'rules' of a group when it comes to placement; in a smaller number you might find that in trying to create randomness you lose the true randomness of nature. In a larger composition you cannot help but create crossing trunk lines, or obscured trees, that actually create a lot of the interest and keep you wanting to explore it. It also removes the 'rule' that a group needs to be an odd number. Once you have that many trees in a planting, I think anyone saying that it's worse off for being an even number vs an odd number is missing the bigger picture.

Secondly, using multiple groups within a larger group will mean that there is less of the feel that the group isn't refined enough. The cumulative small amount of branching that does develop will contribute to an overall dense feeling much more quickly than doing multiple, smaller tree number, individual potted groups separately

Thirdly, using groups within the group, rather than randomly planting them all in the pot, will give you somewhere to focus your maintenance on, rather then feeling overwhelmed with the pruning work on it when the time roles around. Being able to focus on the maintenance needs of the smaller groups individually might help alleviate any feelings of being daunted by the prospect of trying to prune the entire group and the interdependent effects on the other trees.

But of course it's totally up to you and my views are just what i would find appealing!