My first-ever "real" attempt at matching a pot//tree, hoping for critiques/feedback (also, it's my 1st-ever carved-rock pot :D )

[SU2]

tl;dr- I made this pot w/o having a tree in mind, I just carved it how I thought the rock would look best then I went through ~100 trees to see which happened to fit it best, so this is very much my 'max effort' at determining the "correct fit" for a pot and am hoping for any&all criticisms/tips/thoughts on this one!! There's only one real flaw my newbie-self can see, and not even sure it's a 'real' flaw but it bothers me, and that's the 'grass' (moss) being too tall in the container, wish it would've been lower, like you'd keep a substrate/soil line in a regular container, but didn't want to do any more aggressive a root-prune so it was either keep a proper soil-height w/o moss, or add the moss and make the 'ground' too tall! Thanks a ton for any feedback!




~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~



~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~

Thoughts & process:
So I've made a couple of these pots so far, this is the first one I made and the 2nd is/was done but am considering making it more of a slab so unsure if it's really 'done' (if I don't make it a slab it's going to basically look similar to this, which is kinda boring to have 2 of the same for such a unique pot - actually, I thought it was unique until, at my 2nd visit to the rock supplier, he mentioned he had another customer doing the same thing for their bonsai lol!)

This was a (12 IIRC) lbs piece of scoria/lava rock, it took over an hour to carve because I had the false impression that getting it wet would speed things up (probably made things ~2-3x harder/longer...my 2nd container, bone-dry, took under 30min) I used a 4.5" diamond cup wheel on my 4A (weak) angle-grinder, then used sanding-stone bits (1/4" shanked) on my die-grinder to do some finishing work and make my drainage holes, am expecting I could make at least 5 of these w/ a single cup wheel (maybe more, hard to tell how much of the lost material on the cup-wheel was due to the wet-sanding of the first pot, doing it on bone-dry may not wear it so badly- I did notice the wear on the cup after doing the first (wet) rock but then didn't notice extra wear after doing the 2nd (dry) stone.

While I'm upset that I can't locate the pumice I want (lighter/white colored, lots of porosity), I can get the darker/'shardy-er' type, stuff feels like a mass of small black&gray crystals, planning to get a larger one of those anyways to make a slab for a much larger specimen, if anyone's got recommendations on other types of rocks to try I'm all ears FWIW the lava rock is $0.59/lbs where I am (and 0.89 for pumice), and the pictured one was 12lbs IIRC but it was almost circular when I got it so I wasted a lot, my 2nd one I got after that little experience and went for a flatter piece (and paid extra care to finding one with a flat bottom, though cavities in the bottom aren't that big a deal as you can just make drain-holes in such spots!) Having done a couple, I now know I can spend $5-15 on a rock, ~25min of time, and have an awesomely unique container! I know this style wouldn't work for many trees but most of my tropical collection are bougainvilleas so I get flower-color-match and Brazil is home to both volcanoes and bougies so they pair in that regard as well Neat thing is that the tree here was a stick I propagated ~1.5yrs ago, so my 'total spent', w/o counting time of course, is laughably low for this, the costs were like 99% time/labor (neither of which were bad for this IMO!)

Thanks for any & all critiques on this "display", whether the pot or the appropriateness of the tree I chose (whether the tree's size, it being in flower, it's styling, whatever!), and as always thanks for looking

 

[SU2]

Oh and in the center of the trunking, that's a "hook" type of deadwood feature, unsure if 'jin' would be accurate, here's a better pic to show that, this was taken while doing the tree-work so it's after putting in grain and before applying LS!

 

[choppychoppy]

Well red lava is from mostly desert areas, usually mined from places like Utah, New Mexico and other desert type landscapes so seeing a tropical tree in a red lava rock doesn't seem to work. For a tropical tree a piece of black lava rock would work much better. Think Hawaii with the black lava soil and the beautiful tropical trees and flowers. And tree wise I assume you just used a piece of material that could fit bc for me that's pretty much throwaway material. Perfectly straight lines and trunk with no real branch structure other than crazy leggy branches.

If you're going to use rocks to plant in I would use the awesome local limestone that is available in Florida pretty much everywhere. The light color is also much more universal in pairing with trees tropical and temperate.

For me this is kind of a fail all around.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I think the red rock really clashes with the color of the flowers.. black rock and you could be onto something for this tree. I do admire the attempt. You can’t win if you don’t play, right? Did you drill drainage holes too? I am curious how the plant will enjoy the pot over the long term.

 

[Mike Hennigan]

To my eye, the color of the rock is far too similar to the color of the flowers, something like a shade of blue would help the flowers really pop. Also, the rugged shape of the pot clashes with the very straight trunk. I think a more formal pot with straight lines would be better suited. Also, if we want to be nitpicky about traditional bonsai pot guidelines, a flowering tree would always go into a glazed pot with a brighter color as opposed to an unglazed earth colored container, not that that needs to be adhered to all the time. I like the container, I just think it would be far better suited for a twisty conifer.