My pride and joy

[SantaCruzin]

Hello everyone. I just recently wired my first bonsai at my club workshop. My tree is a graft of a shimpaku but I don't remember if the understock was a california juniper or a san jose juniper. My tree came from chikugo-en in gardena, but I live up north now. I should have repotted a few months ago so now I'm going to wait till the end of summer. Any styling/pruning suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I was also trying to decide what shape and color pot to go into? I was considering a circular, flat walled, dark brown pot. Probably my favorite bonsai I own, the movement kind of reminds me of a cobra...

I recently had an awesome speaker come to my local bonsai club and he gave me a few suggestions for my tree. I am considering jin'ing the section where the apex is now, and bringing the center branch in the back up to be the new apex. Down the line mabye a few more branches will be jin'd but right now just trying to build some real foliage pads. I would like to keep my tree as a shohin and hopefully enter it in my clubs show next year.

 

[mcpesq817]

I have a very similar shimpaku (mine is maybe slightly bigger at about 12 inches) that I got from Chikugo-En a few years ago. I don't have a picture on here of my tree. Since the trunk and base are relatively thin, what I ended up doing is building a smaller sparse canopy using only the upper most branches, and bringing them down a bit. Kinda like the shimpaku here:

http://www.bonsai4me.com/Gallery/Gallery North of England Bonsai.htm

By the way, I think the Ishiis graft on san jose or prostrata stock for these types of junipers, and not california junipers, but I could be wrong.

Nice tree by the way

*EDIT* Forgot that I also have a smaller kishu from Chikugo-En that is similar to yours and is only about 6" tall. I ended up jinning the lower branches and styled the canopy similar to what I described above. On that one, I'm using a rough looking octagon pot that I got from Erin Pottery.

 

[SantaCruzin]

Thank you. Yeahh I think Ishii's grafts are on san jose's and prostrata's that sounds right once I hear it. Chikugo-En is my favorite nursery and most of my collection would be from there if I still lived in Los Angeles. I'm not familiar with Erin Pottery but I was looking at the website right now, do you just give them the specs you want and they make it for you?