European spruce #5

The European spruce has many larger branches growing in many directions and it will be interesting to see which will stay and which will be turned into jins. The important thing, as with many of my collection at the moment, is to just keep it alive in this first year and then I can start to plan the styles later. Unfortunately this bonsai hobby requires a high level of patience to give time for your trees to recover from the various tasks that we perform year in year out. This is one of the reasons to have many trees if possible so you always have something ongoing.

European spruce #4

This spruce has more growth and the truck was a nice size. Once I can start to style these, hopefully next year, I hope to find hidden a nice bonsai. This is an art in itself trying to find the bonsai within a piece of material, either collected or purchased from a regular garden centre.

European spruce #3

I have already collected two European spruce trees (Picea abies) during the spring this year and couldn't stop myself from going back to the same area and seeing what other potential bonsai were hiding on the side of the road. I managed to find three more that have had the same treatment of being trimmed year on year by the verge cutter.

This spruce I like for the lack of growth. It sounds funny to say but the style of the tree is already heading in a clear direction and the broken branches will make for some good jins.