Rob’s Juniper with amazing deadwood.

November 2016 – My first encounter with the tree. Interesting deadwood but the foliage is just so far away from the trunk. We needed to just let the tree grow to try and force growth nearer the trunk.

The natural deadwood is amazing. It is very difficult to determine whether this is in fact a natural tree or an old “tanuki”. The two elements are firmly attached together and follow very close natural lines.

April 2022 – Well the tree has certainly put some growth on and is in good condition.

The tree after a branch selection and thinning out of foliage.

September 2022 – The selected branches have grown well and the unwanted branches have been made into deadwood.

November 2022 – Rob had wired the tree including longitudinal wires and raffia on the main trunk as I had envisaged some tight bending. We then discussed the possibility of removing the live section completely and attaching a young Juniper Ittogawa to the deadwood.

January 2023 – The tree had been left with me to sort out. I studied my stock of Juniper Ittogawa looking for a suitable tree to attach to the deadwood. The tricky part was determining where I would attach it to make it look convincing.

The tree seen from the other side. After much deliberation and taking into account the excellent work Rob had done in getting the existing living section to this stage I decided to see what I could do with the wired branches. If I could create a reasonable image with what we have we could try and develop this further knowing that we could still always revert to plan B using the Ittogawa if we were unhappy with the result.

This was the image I managed to create from what we had. When the tree is next repotted it would be tilted slightly towards the right to bring the apex more over the deadwood.

The view from the other side. This turned out much better than I expected and Rob was happy with the result too.

We will now persevere with the foliage to try and get it denser and more compact. At least we now have a good foliage canopy to match the impressive deadwood. There is potential here to create a really good tree.

I will keep you posted and if we do feel the need to resort to plan B I will follow it up with photographs and explanations.

For now let’s just enjoy the tree we have!