Olive Tree Gets a Virtual Makeover

About a month ago I discussed the possibility of changing the front of my olive tree.

The few comments I received at Reddit came from people who felt that I should stick with my original front. Thankfully that's not a decision I have to rush into making, because a month later I'm still feeling really confused.

A long and well thought out response from richprettyboy really got me thinking though. You can read his suggestions in the comments on my Reddit post. With his permission, I'm sharing his virtual edit of my photo here.

Virtual edit by richprettyboy from one of my photos

While I probably won't follow this plan exactly I have to admit that it's a big improvement on the way the tree looks right now.

What immediately stands out is that he has removed a few excess branches which were making the top of the tree look really cluttered. With this in mind I brought the tree back inside to get some photos with a few of the branches covered up.

Starting with the current front:

Current front - March 2018

I covered up two branches that really bother me:

March 2018 - two undesirable branches covered up

I think that's an improvement, though the top two branches are on the same level. How to deal with that?

In Photoshop I tried removing one branch and repositioning the other.

Extra branch removed and second left branch raised

No, that isn't going to work.The tree looks too naked now. Pulling the branch on the right down (in the first "pruned" picture) probably won't work either. Maybe wait for a new bud to appear slightly lower on the right side.

Moving on to my alternate front:

Potential front - March 2018

I tried covering up the same branches.

Potential front - two undesirable branches covered up

Once more I have a problem with handlebars.

Looking at the tree from different angles also made me realise that the taller jin is rather straight with a bit of reverse taper. Removing some branches might help with the reverse taper, but not the straightness. It also seems a bit too tall and there's a slight temptation to shorten it, though I'd hate to lose the carving that has been done at the top and really don't know who'd redo if for me now.

Still, I tried it out in Photoshop to see how it looks:

Potential front pruned in Photoshop

The branches don't look right, but I prefer the trunk that height. If only pruning a tree was that easy!

Whichever front I opt for in the end, I need to get rid of a few branches and grow a few new ones in better positions. However with material of this quality I lack the self confidence to make any major changes on my own, so I'll probably be taking it to our club meeting in May for some expert opinion. In the meanwhile I'll allow some of the new buds that are forming to grow if their position seems like it might be useful. It will be easier to remove unwanted branches once I know that suitable replacements are waiting to fill the gaps.

New Ideas for an Old Olive Tree

When Rob Kempinski did the initial styling on one of my olive trees in late 2013 his plan for its future was to create a tree with short, tight pads of foliage. It never even crossed my mind to question his design at the time. But as the tree developed I've always felt something wasn't quite right.

It was only after I wrote my first post about it, however, that I started to see a different way forward. It all started with an illustration I received from one of my Reddit readers, -music_maker-:

Sketch ©-music_maker-

He envisaged a much fuller tree, an idea which really excited me. There was only one problem - two dimensional photos tend to misrepresent trees and as a result he'd put a branch on top of a small jin. I figured his design would need a little tweaking but I was up for the challenge.

With my new plan in mind I allowed the branches to grow, doing only minimal pruning to get rid of misdirected growth, shortening the bottom branch once it had fattened up, and getting rid of the new buds that continue to sprout all over the trunk. But the top remained unchanged.

The next breakthrough came in July 2017 when Kathy Steyn did a demonstration on a much bigger olive at our club. I took my tree along to that meeting for a critique and Kathy also felt that the tree needed a live apex. At the time she suggested I allow a bud coming off one of the back branches to grow and I kept that one for a while. Fortunately the tree produced a better bud coming straight off the trunk, enabling me to remove the poorly positioned one.

My new leader is now growing strongly and I'm really looking forward to the day that I can shorten it and start developing a proper apex. This photo was taken a few days ago:

March 2018

I'm still not too happy with the cluster of branches high up on the main trunk though. They seem rather cluttered and poorly arranged to me and perhaps in time one or two will have to go. Photos from all four sides may give a clearer idea of the true situation:

View from all four sides

And while rotating the tree to get these photos, I started to wonder whether I've been working with the right front. The current one was chosen by a senior member of my bonsai club and is slightly different from Rob Kempinski's original front.

I find myself drawn to this option:

Potential new front

Some will argue that it has less movement than the current front and that the base appears narrower from that side, but I'm not too happy with the appearance of the wide gap between the main trunk and the big jin when viewed from the current front. I find my attention pulled in two opposing directions with no real focal point.

Of course a change of front would mean that the branches will need some tweaking, but I can live with that. I'd rather spend a bit more time regrowing branches if it means developing a better tree.

More photos (and future updates) can be found here.

A Vigorous Olive Tree

In October 2013 my bonsai club hosted a convention attended by members of the bonsai community from all parts of South Africa. The headliners at this convention were three foreign guests, among them an American called Rob Kempinski.

In addition to hearing the speeches, I was fortunate enough to attend one of Rob Kempinski's workshops.

In the build-up to the convention I realised that most of my trees weren't worthy of a workshop of this calibre, and luckily I was able to buy an old olive tree which had been collected from the wild a year or two earlier. This is what it looked like just before the workshop:

October 2013 - before initial styling

At the workshop the best possible branches were selected and Rob Kempinski also did a bit of carving for me, as well as refining the jin at the top with a blowtorch. After the workshop it looked like this:

October 2013 - after initial styling

I then left it to grow for a while so that the lower branches could develop, but did the odd bit of tidying up work as this tree has a tendency to put out lots of buds on old wood.

New buds forming on trunk

I have to remove these regularly, otherwise the entire design of the tree will be lost.

By August 2015 those lower branches had thickened up a fair amount and had been trimmed back so that the tree was starting to resemble a proper bonsai. In addition, a little more carving had been done at my club's workshops.

August 2015

However the tree had one major issue which was really worrying me. As the tree had originally had very one-sided growth, the lowest branch on the left was actually a back branch which had been pulled to the side. It looks okay in the picture above, but from the back it looked really ugly:

Rear branch pulled to side

This is where the tree's tendency to produce lots of buds helped me out. Within weeks after this photo was taken, a new bud had appeared exactly where I wanted it.

New branch forming in front of old one

Once that branch had grown long and strong enough for me to be sure of its survival, I removed the old branch and wired the new one into position, with the tip pointed upwards to encourage it to grow vigorously and fatten up.

After removing old side branch

At the same time I repotted the tree, changing the angle slightly to make the top jin a more dominant apex.

December 2015, after repotting

In February I took it to a workshop where I was persuaded to remove the lowest branch, a decision I still sometimes question.

Lowest branch removed

Hopefully by the time the new branch has fattened up I'll be able to convince myself that it was the right decision.

Repotting the tree in fresh soil seems to have increased its vigour. Despite removing the new buds in both February and March, a month of neglect meant that the whole structure of the tree had disappeared behind a sea of new growth.

Olive tree, overgrown after one month of neglect

After a quick tidy up this week, it now looks like this:

April 2016

Aside from developing the new branch, there is still quite a lot of refining to do. Those pads look quite unbalanced to me, and I can't help feeling that the lower jin is too heavy. As I don't do my own carving it will need another workshop soon.

Updated photos can be found here.