A cypress for Arcobonsai. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a tree in all these years simply by choosing from a picture. I just can’t do it! I need to see it, touch it, walk around it to fall in love and decide whether to welcome it into my collection. Then, in 2019, a dear friend put this cypress up for sale on a social media and instantly I was so curious to get to know it properly. After a little while I was standing in front of the cypress tree, which immediately won me over with some lovely details: a beautifully sized nebari and the dark bark on the trunk, enhanced by the already old dry wood. The lack of movement was counterbalanced by some features that would ensure a composition with a significant sensation of old age. The straight trunk, distinguished by an old shari, ends in a manageable way. The strong and vigorous vegetation attests the excellent health of the cypress. In two seconds flat, the tree was at home! I never make hasty decisions and all newly arrived trees are simply cultivated for a year, at least. This cypress is no exception, so it […]
I adore cypresses! Besides being the typical tree of my beloved Tuscany, I see in this essence the perfect combination of strength and grace. Its unmistakable scent, its dark green colour and its grey, wrinkled bark are the elements able to make it my favourite tree. I bought this cypress in 2007 from a very dear friend. It was definitely not the container in which it had been placed that draw my attention, but rather the large, old trunk with its beautiful dry wood. The vegetation, allowed to grow freely, testified the excellent health of the tree. From the large, compact trunk, there were two generously sized branches which, however, created an unsightly fork. The upper right branch was particularly long and cylindrical and the vegetation was very distant. The lower left branch was a different matter, with rich vegetation even close to the trunk. I began by shortening this last branch with a hacksaw. Then I move on to the upper branch, shortening it with a splitter, to highlight the wood fibres and create a natural effect; I leave only a little Jin. This is a fairly drastic pruning as most of the vegetation is removed. […]
I get back here with an update of the boxwood project already described in a previous article, (you can find it here: https://www.francescosantini.it/it/bosso-in-stile-doppio-tronco/ ) In 2017 the work had been up to this point: In 2019 I decide to rearrange the foliage of this bonsai. In the last two years the vegetation has grown and thickened. The two canopies are sparsely spaced and so we decide to lower the canopy of the smaller tree in order to create a more defined spacing between the two trees. For this task we use a metal bar that acts as an anchor for a guy wire. Boxwood does not have elastic branches, so moving large branches is usually laborious and time-consuming. I always recommend working in stages, making small periodic moves, tightening the guy wire several times a year. An interestingly remarkable aspect I recently realized is the pleasure of having my students (but above all my friends) work on my trees. I have always been jealous of my bonsai, but I must say that over time I have become more and more enthusiastic in sharing my work with friends and sometimes even entrusting it to them. This is the case of […]
Recent Comments