Hornbeam 01
Korean Hornbeam [Carpinus coreana]
Group planting/Penjing/Saikei/Forest

FEBRUARY 23, 2024. No repot for this one, but I’m really happy with the new configuration. I guess the horrible experience of totally realigning everything in a new arrangement paid off. The trees grew really well last year, So all I did this time was guy wire the central tree to hold it in a better upright position and prune the bejeebers out of all three. I think it will be an improvement. UPDATE: Pruning helped a lot. I’m pleased. It’s also interesting to see how I had an idea sort of like this back in 2017. Now I’ve just rotated the individual trunks and placed each one in a more upright position with the major scar from big chops to the back. Where they belong! Photo coming after leaf-out happens, but I’ve started a new gallery below, where I’ll keep only the photos in this alignment.

MARCH 6, 2023. Today I bit the bullet, girded up my loins, took the bit in my teeth, and probably covered several other clichés: I repotted the hornbeam group. It still has problems, it might always have problems, it might not even live another year, but at least the last incarnation of my idea about how a group could be fashioned form these three trees is a thing of the past. I tried to put the sketch below into action. I think this will be OK eventually. I might even live to see it.

BUT — I will never wait this long to repot something as long as I live. HORRIBLE! I know the next challenge I have is doing the same thing with the sweetgum group, so maybe this has been a warmup/ practice round. I will prevail!

November 3, 2022. Next spring I have to repot this one. Really — I MUST repot it. It’s a mess. On the good side, I realized working on it over the summer (and it takes a lot of working on, vigorous grower that it is) that I’ve been treating the group of trees as though I needed a single line in the silhouette. That’s nuts. So some time in August I took it to the workbench and worked on differentiating the three individual trees, while keeping the overall arch of the shape of the silhouette in mind. It’s going to be so much better. I’ll have to be careful to preserve the upward right-slanting tilt of the left-most tree, because if I don’t I’m back with a silhouette that looks like a wedge of cheese — a very green wedge of cheese. The corollary to that is shortening the reach of the right-hand tree. Absolutely necessary. The other thing I’ve decided is to move the group to the blue oval I somehow got from the Mike Lee estate. I think I paid $25 or $30 for it. It’s the right size, it’s a good Tokoname pot, but it has a crack that I can hide on the back. But it’s VERY shallow. As is often said — I need a challenge.

Looking at the photograph above,, I wonder if I haven’t had a bad design all along — with regard to the trunks, at least. It has never “sparked joy,” so I might just rethink the whole composition. I’m not ready to break the whole thing up, but it needs saving somehow. I must ponder this some more. Maybe I’ll get a good photo after all the leaves have dropped. That would help a lot. Meanwhile, here’s a possible way to realign the three trees, getting rid of the almost horizontal trunk of the No. 2 tree (which will now be in the left-most position). No. 1 tree is in the center, where it belongs, and I can tweak the spacing so that 1 and 3 are closer together than 1and 2. That would leave more space for seeing the No. 2 tree than this little sketch shows. I can also rotate the trunks so that the chops are all facing the back of the composition. Clearly those chops are not going to get better because they haven’t changed in years.

March 9, 2021. I’m not repotting this one this year. I hope that means it’s a little pot-bound; that should encourage smaller leaves and better ramification. I’m discovering just how tricky that is with alternate-leaf species! BTW – I still think it looks better from the back side, even without clothes on.

Summer 2020. No fooling! Here’s a photo with foliage, with some marks to show what I need to do this year. The red marks are two gaps in the foliage that have to be filled in. The gap on the right needs to be filled with foliage from the middle tree–the one in the back. The green marks show places that I have to let the foliage that’s there extend a good bit to make the silhouette better. I also want to drop the long tree on the right down a little, but that will have to wait till next year’s potting adjustments. I’ll also move the whole composition left in the pot then.

March 17, 2020. This is getting to be fun, making adjustments after I see the tree in a photograph. It’s a shame I don’t see those things when I’m working on the tree; sure would save time! So today I think I helped the silhouette by tinkering with the wiring, but the tree on the left still needs work, and there are just too many branches crowded together in a single horizontal plane. Some of the might have to go, because a little more foliage and it’ll look like the lettuce bin at Publix.

February 27, 2020. Repotted today. This was my first attempt at using some muck to prop up the mounded soil on the left of the design. I bought a two-pound bag of “Muck-O” from Superbly Bonsai. Now that I’ve actually used some, I have a better idea of the consistency I’ll want when I make some. We’ll see how that works out. I think I got the angles right, and I’m really happy with it at this point. In fact I think I ended up with the trunk angles better than the ones I had hoped for. UPDATE: February 29, 2020. Looking at the photo I made this morning, I thought I needed to move the whole thing farther to the left, like it was before I repotted things. And the middle trunk needed to be tweaked. And branches need a lot of refinement in growth as well as placement. So this morning I took it apart and tried again. Trunk placement is better, and angles front to back are good. But I have to rewire and tweak branches again. Never a dull moment.

BEFORE

AFTER – Version 1

AFTER – Version 2

February 4, 2020. I took this to my one-hour shot with Kathy Shaner back in May 2019. She had a lot to say about the mistake of having the skinniest tree be the tallest, so last summer I started an air layer to shorten the middle tree. The air layer had roots, but not enough for survival in the 100-degree fall weather, so it’s a goner. Yesterday I started the work of cleaning up the chop on that one and on the tree on the right. They both look much better. I also pruned and wired all three trees. They’re beginning to show some fattening buds, so I’ll be able to take care of Kathy’s other suggestion soon. The tree on the right has already slipped lower than it is in the photo below, and the one of the left actually has a more upright trunk position than what shows. I’ll adjust all but the one on the left, place them all a little close together. and see how it all looks then. My hope is that I can come close to the e-drawing on the left.

March 17, 2019. This one got a new pot and some adjustments to the planting angles a week ago. The adjustments turned out to be minor, but big changes in the pot (much shallower unglazed oval) and position within the pot made a nice change in the overall composition. This photo shows the three from the original “front” I had in mind. I’m still conflicted about which view works best. This will do for now, although I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. Anyway–in this practically naked view, the trunk links are much more believable. And I think the windswept idea is beginning to look and feel right. That’s important.

September 8, 2018. I took this one to the Bonsai Workshop at Aldridge Garden this morning and spent two hours taking the wire off. I’m getting somewhere with this, but I do have to modify the planting angle of two of the trees next year. The shortest tree is too upright as it comes up out of the soil; it should lean at least a little in the same direction as the others. The middle tree will require more adjustment than that, I’m afraid. I’ll have to be very careful not to tear too many roots. It has to be moved farther from the short tree, and it must be rotated so that its long skinny trunk doesn’t cross the third one’s trunk. I thought it would work, but it doesn’t.

The photo is another one from the original back view, and I’m just about convinced it should be the front. Check out the original planned front in the photos below.

May 3, 2018. This thing is growing like a house afire! And I’ve decided I like the back better than the front, and that might be because the front has become sort of overgrown. Check the two photos below.

March 6, 2018. I need to thank Donna for her “windswept” question. Detail wiring for this one is tedious as it can be, something I’ve never done before to this extent, but thinking of this as a windswept style has made me see the whole thing as a windswept forest. The movement isn’t just left to right, it’s left to up right at about a forty-five degree angle. And that angle is determined by the tree on the right, so thank you Kathy for seeing that last year. I’m going out and working with wire daily at this point but I’m not spending a lot of time on any one day. I get frustrated/tired and start to make careless moves. Technically I’d say the wiring I’m doing is improved over what I’ve done in the past by about 50%. Lots of room for more improvement.

February 21, 2018. I repotted the three last Saturday, after the ABS workshop. I’m not happy with what I ended up doing, because I didn’t really follow my plan. Donna looked at my alignment of the three pots, and the first thing she said was, “Are you going for a windswept?” So I got home and started playing. I’m sorry now that I did.

I didn’t use the huge new red pot, as I intended, but Brian’s smaller and shallower blue pot. And I didn’t place the trees in the right relationship to each other, so they look like they’re in a straight line. I hate it, so I might just re-pot the re-pot. The buds were swelling but not yet opening, so it should be safe. Update: Done. The repot has been repotted in the red pot the big elm was in last year. It looks a lot better!

January 2018. I’ve pruned a couple of them, getting ready for a major clean-up and repot as a forest. I haven’t attacked the big knob on top of the tree that will lean to the right, but I’ll do that before the month is out. Then I’ll line them up in something like their placement in the group and take a good photo while they’re naked.

November 2017. I’ve played with position of the three trees all summer, and I now have a detailed plan of the placement I want for the three of them. In essence, it’s the sketch below, refined and detailed a little.

August 2017. Planning, August 2017 I’ve been sloppy and haven’t updated this page as I should have. I took the three for an hour with Kathy Shaner at the ABS show in May. She helped me with two of the trees especially, and they’re looking better in most respects. One of the things she did was make me see a possibility for turning one of them into a slant style, like a tree that had been blown over. Ron Dennis was watching us at the table, and he suggested a way I could make the three work together, including the slanted tree. I think that’s direction I’ll take in the spring. The sketch to the left gives the general idea. I’ll have to chop the smallest tree (currently the tallest) to be the shortest, but that’s life for a tree. It has the smallest trunk and needs to be shorter than the center tree in the sketch. 🙂

At this point all I’m doing is cutting back all the growth as it continues–and it is continuing, even in August. Now that I’ve looked at everything closely, I think I like the second photo below as the front of the center tree.
2017.03.31. Three Korean Hornbeams bought on eBay from a grower I never heard of. Not the best move to make, probably. They didn’t look great, the price was low, and I thought I could use all three in a grove/group planting. But one of them could be a really nice tree without a lot of work. I’m not sure about the other two. Anyway — keep ’em alive till next spring and make a decision then. Front and back photos of the nicer one.