I've had this ficus microcarpa for a few years. I want to develop it into a better tree, which is why I'm considering removing the grafted foliage and trying to develop the tree with the foliage of the rootstock. I am not sure though, if this is a good idea. Would chopping the trunk and bending the large extending branch up in order to develop a new canopy be a good idea? I've also included a picture of the tree when I got it and a very rough sketch of my plan for the tree.
Thankful for any advice.
I haven't worked with Microcarpa but wanted to provide you a little feedback on the tree and general design.
This "S" shaped style is pretty common for a first time bonsai tree, and it can be good and bad. The good is that you have some movement down low so you have some interest to work with. The bad is that the shape starts to look pretty artificial (at least to my eyes) and a lot of these trees don't have much taper. You can see on this screenshot your trunk thickness is pretty similar in these 2 points on the tree:
It sounds like you're already planning a chop but IMO I think a cut at A would be the minimum you'd need to cut off, and maybe even to B (or lower potentially). Chopping the trunk will allow you to start building some taper in the plant and give you a better overall feel:
It's hard to pick a front based off of a handful of pictures but I mocked up a very rough image using basic "guidelines" (branches on outside of bends, triangle-ish profile) and I think if you cut this down and can build the ramification on the branching you could have a very cool tree:
The nice part about ficus is you can easily air layer the top off and create a second tree that already has some movement to it. I think the problem a lot of newer bonsai practitioners have with ficus is not chopping aggressively enough. Ficus are tough plants and respond well to hard cut backs. I'll include a good thread for you to review from
@Lorax7 who has a good ficus project going. He's in Michigan so I would imagine the climate is similar-ish to you in Finland:
Picked this up at Home Depot this spring. Repotted it and did an air layer on it in the spring (already harvested). Wired it today. Got some moist sphagnum around the base of the trunk to try to encourage it to grow some banyan style exposed roots.
www.bonsainut.com
I'll also include a couple videos that Eric Schrader made about ficus pruning and the need to make aggressive cuts to set the tree up for future success:
Good luck!
