Styling of an elm
I knew an old man, Mr. Fox, from Potsdam, outside Berlin. He had grown Bonsai
for many years and surely must have been one of the bonsai pioneers in East
Germany. When I met him, he had become to old to take care of all his plants
and had simply planted them in his very large garden. I helped Mr. Fox with
some garden work and was "paid" in raw material. That is how I got hold of this
elm.
I normally prefer to work on Swedish material and I really do not know this
material very well. I liked the tree because it has nice corky bark and a
natural gentle bend of the trunk. It has ugly roots and naturally had grown out
of shape in the last couple of years.
I planted the tree in a wooden box and immediately in the spring of 94
performed radical pruning. The pictures show the results before and after this
operation. as you see, the tree had developed a triple top that was reduced to
only one.
I left some unnecessary green twigs in the top to ensure a good sap flow. I do
not think this was really needed, but better safe then sorry.
During 94, the plant grew very well, as a mater of fact, after the pruning, new
buds sprouted every where, after only 5 days.
The picture is from the end of April 95. I had just pruned a lot of last years
new growth and left some sacrificial twigs that should help some of the new
branches to become more even in size with the old ones. Now I intended to let
the tree grow freely during this growth period.
In the spring of 96 I gave the tree a bonsai pot. I now intended to apply a
clip and growth method to increase the twigginess but I had a lot of problems
with various pests and instead many small twigs died. I had no problems getting
rid of the pests but they kept coming back during the unusually hot summer.
I do not like the aerial root in the back to the left and I tried to build up
with soil around the roots to mask the problem.
This photo was taken in November 96. The tree has started to recover from the
insects' attacks of last year but is still relatively weak.
I have learned that it is difficult to keep this tree healthy without massive
use of insecticides.
In the spring of 98, this is what the tree looks like. I finally built up
courage to remove the ugly root, now I have to reduce the stump and make a
complete wiring of the main branches. Especially one of the back branches needs to be lowered to prevent the feeling of crossing branches on the rights side.
Oops, time flies! Suddenly a year has passed without the wiring of the branches that I had planed. Now it is even more necessary since one of the branches on the right side has died. Anyway, the stump is reduced.
Al right, it is June 2001, I have wired all the primary branches. I am not pleased the tree has got a real pom-pom feeling in that most of the foliage is on the tops of the branches. This can serve as a good example of the fact that deciduous trees need to be pruned back further then one thinks necessary at the time of restyling.
I do not want to cut everything of and start over so I will try something different. I will severely thin out the foliage on the outer perimeter to allow air and light to enter the interior. Perhaps that will give some interior budding that can be used to slowly build up a better structure.
Thank you for your interest! It would be very interesting to get your views, on
what could have been done differently, and what I should do with the tree in
the future.