Transforming a House Plant

I don't remember when we acquired our first schefflera, but it was almost certainly over a decade ago. Technically it wasn't my plant, though I was always the one tasked with caring for it, and it was never intended to become bonsai. Even now I'm not sure it ever will be, but it's certainly benefited from the bonsai skills I've learnt along the way.

The schefflera spent the first few years of its life living in our entrance hall, a room which gets very little natural light and no sunlight at all. It's a testament to the species that it survived in that environment, but somehow it did. Originally it had three thin trunks with foliage high up, but one day I discovered that it was possible to do a trunk chop on schefflera to encourage branching, so I decided to experiment with one trunk. Sadly my experiment didn't have a happy ending as, in my ignorance, I covered that trunk with plastic and misted it frequently. With the benefit of experience I'm sure that trunk died of root rot. Fortunately the other two survived.

Some time later I decided to try again, but this time I left them uncovered and didn't give them excess water and in due course they started budding again. The only photo I could find from that period was this one, taken in November 2008:

November 2008

Although they were growing back fairly well, the foliage looks rather floppy and weak. Hardly surprising given the fact that they were still in the same dark position that they'd inhabited for several years.

By then I'd joined my bonsai club, and one day it occurred to me that they might benefit from a bit of time outdoors with my other trees. Somewhere along the lines I also moved them to a bigger pot.

In the end that move turned out to be permanent as it was impossible for me to impose darkness on them again once I'd seen how much they benefited from their time outside. Not only did they firm up pretty nicely but they have since produced several branches and even one rather strange aerial root:

Roots - August 2016

The biggest surprise however, was when they produced flowers and berries for the first time two or three years ago. I've never seen that on another potted schefflera before or since.

This is what they look like today, full of flower buds waiting to open:

August 2016

Sometimes I'm tempted to turn them into bonsai, but they have terrible nebari and I'm reluctant to sacrifice the flowers, so my pruning is always restricted to those areas which don't have flower buds. As a result the prospect of them ever becoming bonsai seems unlikely. But, like my indoor vs outdoor experiment with ficuses, this is a clear illustration that even plants which can survive indoors will be a lot happier outside.

Other People's Ideas

I love going to bonsai workshops. They're a great place to look for new ideas while socialising with people with whom I have a shared interest.

When I joined my club eight years ago, things were slightly different. I needed all the help I could get in terms of style choice.

Since then experience has taught me that styling choices are subjective and that even the most accomplished bonsai artists may make suggestions that I don't agree with. Tastes differ, and life would be dull if that wasn't the case.

My problem has been developing the self-confidence to say no. Slowly I'm learning not to be rushed into any decisions I may regret later - most of the time. Sometimes I still succumb to pressure, but not as often as I used to.

In October 2015 I had the rare opportunity to go to a workshop attended by members of several of the clubs in my province. One of the trees which I took to that workshop was a small Syzygium which I'd air layered off a larger tree about a year ago. I knew it had too many branches but was undecided which ones to remove.

October 2015 - before workshop. The wires were there
 to secure the tree in its pot and were no longer needed.

Had I opted to remove only the lowest branches, it had the makings of a fairly decent broom style tree, but it was not to be.

One of the people at that workshop was a foreign guest. I'd already "met" her on Facebook and seen glimpses of the work she was doing, so when she decided that she wanted to work on my tree I gave her the go ahead.

As it turned out, her ideas were very different to mine and I came away with something that will in time probably become a fairly conventional informal upright tree. At the time the top was very bare, while the lowest branches were left as sacrifice branches to fatten the trunk.

October 2015 - after workshop

Since then it has filled in quite a lot.

January 2016 - before work

Today I decided to bring it inside for a quick tidy up, and not a moment too soon, because some of the wires were starting to bite quite badly.

Scars where wire has bitten into a branch

The branches held their position reasonably well when the wire was removed, so I decided not to rewire the tree for now. Instead I only removed a little unwanted growth from the trunk while it was still young enough not to leave unnecessary scars.

Unwanted new growth on trunk

I left one young twig though because I felt that the tree needed an extra branch in that area. It's got a lot of catching up to do, so I will have to let that one grow unrestricted for quite a while.

Zoomed in to show gap I'd like to fill

I also discovered one small branch which hasn't grown back since it was pruned and is almost certainly dead. Though I haven't removed it yet, I'll probably have to grow a replacement. Fortunately, as I've already shown, Syzygiums tend to produce masses of buds everywhere, so hopefully growing a replacement won't be a problem.

In time this should develop into a nice little tree, but I can't help feeling that it terms of style it will never really be mine.

After removing wire and unwanted growth on trunk - January 2016

The Benefit of Experience

I know that I've still got a lot to learn about styling bonsai, but I like to believe that my skills have improved in the eight years since I joined my bonsai club.

One of the lessons I've learnt along the way is that trying to do too much too soon can actually slow down the process in the long run. The tree I wrote about in a HubPages article several years ago is a case in point.

It was one of my first creations, started from a cutting shortly before I joined my club in 2007. With the over-enthusiasm of a newbie I started styling it as soon as it had formed roots, thus limiting its ability to fatten up and condemning it to being rather slim for its height.

Being new to bonsai, I believed that following the rules was essential, so I tried to use the correct branch placement for an informal upright tree but made a very basic error in not growing the base of the trunk at a slant, resulting in a rather unsatisfactory first bend. By the time I realised my error, however, it was too late to do anything about it.

In 2010 I decided that it was ready for a bonsai pot and I proudly put it on display at my club's show that spring.

Once in a bonsai pot its growth slowed down drastically and the branches have never filled in as much as I'd have liked them to.

In bonsai pot - November 2015

In November 2015 I finally decided it was time to do something about that so I moved the tree back into a training pot in the hope that the extra root space would help it to regain some of the vigour of its youth.

Moved to training pot - November 2015

After that I left it to grow freely and it the last couple of months it produced a fair amount of new growth.

Before pruning - January 2016

Today I planned to give it a slight trim to encourage the branches to ramify. However as soon as I got started I realised that most of the new growth was in the wrong place - at the tips of the branches, though on the lowest branch much of the foliage was growing back towards the trunk, disguising an unattractive straight section before the branch first divided in two. There are similar flaws at the top of the tree.

Once I realised that all that growth was doing nothing to help with those flaws I decided to cut back hard in the hope of getting some back-budding to fill in those gaps. For now, after pruning, all those flaws are very noticeable.

After pruning - January 2016

Hopefully the fact that they are now getting a lot more light will help to encourage growth where I really want it. If not, I may need to prune even harder.

At times I've contemplated giving this tree a whole new look but a part of me feels I should stick to the original plan to show how my sense of style has evolved over the years.

In 2010, when I first put it into its bonsai pot, I propagated a new tree from one of its roots. By then I'd learnt to take my time, so I let the new tree grow freely for a couple of years before I cut back the trunk and started developing branches. It is one of the two ficuses I discussed in an earlier post.

Here is a photo of parent and child standing side by side.

Parent and child - January 2016. Child is on the right

The child may be a lot smaller than its parent, but I far prefer its structure, though I sometimes wonder if it isn't a little too tall. But thanks to the experience I gained along the way, the child is much closer to becoming a decent bonsai than the parent is.

Joining a Bonsai Club

I first became interested in bonsai in around the year 2000, but at the time I was unaware that there were clubs which could help me to develop my bonsai skills.

So I did a little reading and then set off to buy my first tree. At the time I wanted to keep my bonsai indoors, which meant my options were limited.  It will come as little surprise that one of my first attempts was a Ficus.

Unfortunately I misinterpreted some of what I read and it didn’t take me long to kill my tree. I cried the day I realised that, after one too many defoliations, my little tree had run out of energy to fight me and that it would never put out any more foliage.

Happily I was not put off that easily and I soon went looking for my next victim.

After a few failures I finally learnt how to keep my trees alive but in the process I put little effort into styling them. With hindsight I realise that I was no longer trying to grow bonsai, just keeping potential bonsai as house-plants.

All that changed in 2007 when I visited a local bonsai show and was persuaded to join the club.

I was hesitant to attend my first meeting because I didn’t know how I was going to fit in among a group of strangers, many of whom had years of experience, but I needn’t have worried. Everyone was very friendly and helpful and joining the club changed my life.

At the time I knew an elderly couple who shared my love of bonsai but grew their trees entirely for their own enjoyment. I often discussed bonsai with them and one discussion sticks in my mind to this day.

When I mentioned how much I enjoyed attending the club’s workshops and how I appreciated the help I got from some of the more experienced members, the woman was unimpressed. She felt I should be styling my trees on my own. Of course I didn’t let her argument deter me.

It was only several years later that I finally got the opportunity to see that couple’s trees and I hate to say that I was really disappointed by what I saw. But as I said in my previous post, not every tree has to be a show-stopper. If they enjoyed their trees, that’s all that really matters.

That’s not to say they wouldn’t have benefited from joining a club. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s keen on letting their trees develop to their full potential.

Japanese Bonsai Tree Sunset Poster

by Lasting__Impressions