AusBonsai

I brought this advanced nursery stock from my local native nursery Muru Mittigar in October. It was the best trunk they had plant was 1700mm high. I only have natives in the development stage and wanted something more advanced to work with. I wired it last week over 4 days, it took me about 5 hours to finish wire in total. I wired the primary and secondary branches. I really enjoyed the process, I have never wired a tree this much before. I highly recommend it if your learning. The tree now measures 1000l x 900w x 900h.
I plan on trying to crank the trunk further down to reduce the height and possibly reduce more of the branches. First time I have worked with Stypheliodes, it is local to my area and wanted to give it a go. Not sure how to develop the pads/tertiary branches but will learn as I go.
Please feel free to offer any advice.
Matt

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All good but it now has it's full size - more or less. That means only one thing. Going backwards. So what you are doing is reducing into a bonsai rather than growing into one - if that makes sense. I have seen this kind of work done before at demos but have never understood the concept behind it. That could mean I'm a bit slow of course. But to me it always made more sense to reduce the tree down as far as it could go and use that as your starting point. In other words, you only get to the point you are at now after many years.
That is not to say that you cannot develop your ''pads'' by not allowing further extension and clipping for density but you will not achieve the same interest and convolution in the branch form unless you build each branch slowly a few cm/year.
Otherwise you end up with a linear branch which you can easily follow from trunk to tip.
In reality, the really interesting (and visually pleasing) natural branches are formed by constant replacement of the leader due to die back, wind damage, insects, shading or other reasons as can be seen here..