Juniper 09
Shimpaku Juniper [Juniperus chinensis ‘Shimpaku’]

April 21, 2024

APRIL 21, 2024. This one didn’t get a repot this year — it wasn’t needed. I’ve cleaned it up a little, and I’ll do more before the club show May 18. I think it’s looking better this year. stronger growth in the lower branches, I’ll have to be careful with mossing it, but it’s looking good! Of course, now that I have a photograph to look at, I can see where some pinching and pruning will be needed. I want a very smooth outline/silhouette, but I still want the definition of inner branches to be clear. That’s working, but the outline is lumpy. Gotta fix that.

MARCH 19, 2023. I have no big changes in mind for this tree this year. Other than getting a good moss base around it, that is. I did try to trim it a little, and I have some wiring to do to pretty up the silhouette. It has started to look like the candelabra from the Disney Beauty and the Beast. Not what I wanted to see. I’m looking for a balance between that and the extended football helmet outline. Something that has a mature tree outline and at the same time shows the interior branch structure supporting foliage pads that are separately beautiful but also contribute to the whole. Everybody loves a challenge, right?

October 31, 2022

OCTOBER 31, 2022. two really good things happened to this tree since I repotted it. The first is that it survived the repotting and actually thrived all year long. The most important thing was that I took a couple of Junipers to my one-hour meeting with Kathy at the show in May and finally paid attention to her as she told me (not for the first time, probably) what I had to do to maintain health and good growth in a juniper. Hallelujah! I listened, understood, took all that to heart, etc. I still have work to do with the silhouette of this tree, but it has a much better chance than it has had before. Next spring I need to pull in the sides of the first two branches, clean up the growth again, and let ‘er go. I still like the tree, it’s still a favorite, I still think of Mike Lee when I look at it, but it will now spark more joy just in and of itself. That’s a plus! And I might even put it in the show in 2023.

March 15, 2022. Well, I actually did leave this one alone after I repotted it last year, and it has done very, very well. I’m particularly pleased with growth on the back branch above the first branch on the left. You can see in the photo below that after repotting the general silhouette looked like a character is the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. All arms and blobs at the end of them. letting it grow in full sun and turning it around so the back got good sun meant that branch grew and filled in the hole nicely. What I see now is a good full silhouette with enough depth to make it look really tree-like. I’m pleased, and I hope if someone else sees it they’ll be pleased as well.

The next thing I have to do is keep the apex in check and beef up the lower branches on each side — especially the right. Some of that can be accomplished with careful wiring, but the rest will need the same amount of light and care the back side got last year. I’ll get a photo pretty soon, because the ones that are down there now look pretty pitiful. It’s not a pitiful tree. 🙂

March 21, 2021 – after repot

March 21, 2021. I finally got around to cleaning this one up and repotting it today. In the same pot. Scraped off a lot of broken down soil, used mostly fine pumice over a bed of shohin size recycled 1:1:1 mix. I’m going to force myself to wait until at least June to do another thing to it. And I’m going to give it lots of love and light between now and June. The photo was taken right after the repot; there’s another one below. I can see where work needs to be done, but I’m going to keep my promise and not do anything else for months.

October 23, 2019. I’m way behind in making notes on this little tree. Gradually I’ve come to admit that the “tea cozy” silhouette and overall design was probably the result of uncontrolled growth. As a result I started in the spring of this year to work on removing some branches and doing what I could to get some growth closer to the trunk. I did manage to get enough light into the apex to encourage some new crotch growth in the spring, and that has grown well. I also put a little bit of a bend in some of the lower branches. I couldn’t overdo that, though, because the trunk is pretty straight, and twisted curly branches wouldn’t look right. This week I cut off several–almost all, in fact–of the branches sprouting from the top of the trunk. I think it’ll help in the long run, because the crotch growth on the top is doing well. I’ll do more in the spring.

The only negative I’ve seen is a patch of juvenile growth on one lower branch. I’ll live with that for now.

May 18, 2018. I took this one to the ABS show today to ask Kathy Shaner about encouraging better growth on the lower parts of the tree. She did all the trimming of the growth on the apex, which I knew had to be trimmed. I enjoyed watching how she went about doing that. She said to be sure to keep moving from section to section so I didn’t overdo one section over another. Something I’m prone to doing. I did a little more trimming of the lower limbs, just to bring things in line with the silhouette. It’s looking better.

When I looked at my first comment below, I realized I didn’t ever ask Kathy about just ditching the current non-traditional style and going for a more typical formal upright. I think she might prefer that I go that way, but we never talked about it. She just agreed that this tree has a different design. Not happily. She just agreed with that incontrovertible statement. I just choose to interpret that as support for maintaining its current style.

February 25, 2018. I bought this one yesterday at the sale of Mike Lee’s trees. It’s in a really nice Chingwen Arts pot, but I think the pot looks a little light-weight or may too feminine for the tree. Or it’s perfect and I’m wrong.

I need to take this tree to the workshop with Kathy. It’s overgrown at the apex, needs thinning there, and actually pretty slim and scraggly at the bottom. From a distance I think this might be better worked up as a more traditional formal upright style, thinning a lot of branches. I’ll see what Kathy suggests.