Hey Travi,

thx for joining in
Do you know which species of maple this is? Before you invest a decade.. Make sure the species responds well to bonsai training. Some maples tend to have very big leaves, and long leaf stalks: They look very odd when grown as bonsai. I like you have adapted the baby bending technique. I find it invaluable for developing plants.

Honestly I'm not 100% sure. I got the seed from the maple tree growing in my back yard, I didn't know that I will have to look into it. Thank you letherback.

Here's two jades that I've been working on. My wife had given me a jade a long time ago, and when it began to die, I took a bunch of clippings from it.

Here are the clippings in their first pot. This is September 2013.



They stayed in the pot for about 2 years, until I got impatient

They were taken out and moved to individual pots in February 2015. Here is the before and after for two of the clippings.



And now...



And the second...



And now...



Don't pay attention to the string. We've been having some very windy days, and it holds them down better than just wire on the bottom. Especially because they are so top heavy. They both still need a lot of work, and I doubt they'll ever be shown, but they are two of my favorite little trees.

From what I found on my tree it's one of three, sugar maple (Acer saccharum), red maple or silver maple. The red maple has obviously the red leafs, and the silver maple leafs look nothing like what I have bit it is still early, the silver maple is a fast growing tree, the sugar maple is famous for its maple syrup and it has identical leafs to what my maple looks like so I am only guessing that it's a slow growing sugar maple

I bought this pyrachanta for 2.99 at a garden centre 2 years ago
It's mainly been my wire training tree , it was actually the first wiring I ever done , this is is now after 2 wiring sessions
Nice post btw leatherback

Here is one of my Boxwoods. This is a plant originally from Lowes, sold as a boxwood bush.

I trimmed the top and got rid of some branches last year, and started the wiring process as you can tell from this picture, after initial styling:



I got this tree because I thought the slanted tree had an interesting shape, so I wanted to bring the branches down to be in harmony with the trunk. I wired all the branches and let it grow for the rest of the summer last year. This is how it looked this year after winter, and re-potting this early spring:



I let the tree recover from re-potting and proceeded to partially defoliate the tree, my goal is to work on ramification now. This is the tree today, I am letting it grow freely for a while before cutting the top growth:



You can see the tree has already growth some nice internal branch structure from this year. Can't wait to see how it ends up after this year!

I'll post a new image when the tree puts some internal growth.

Thanks for the post leatherback, great initiative.

Eangola: Why did you repot this tree? I thought it could stay in the bigger pot a bit longer, and have a bit more rootspace? I think you could wire it out more. You could already really put the first shape in it. Box grow relatively slow, so putting branches in places takes longer than with most species.

eangola wrote:

Thanks for the post leatherback, great initiative.

The idea is to stimulate people to post trees they are working on. I understand a number of people are not posting trees because of worries that people might consider them not right. Maybe this thread can help show that every tree starts somewhere.

leatherback wrote:

Eangola: Why did you repot this tree? I thought it could stay in the bigger pot a bit longer, and have a bit more rootspace? I think you could wire it out more. You could already really put the first shape in it. Box grow relatively slow, so putting branches in places takes longer than with most species.

eangola wrote:

Thanks for the post leatherback, great initiative.

The idea is to stimulate people to post trees they are working on. I understand a number of people are not posting trees because of worries that people might consider them not right. Maybe this thread can help show that every tree starts somewhere.

True I could have, and a probably should have left it in the big pot. But that is ok. I'll re-wire later this year, thank you for the advice. I don't want to stress the tree more since I re-potted this year. I got the tree mid summer last year, and changed the soil but couldn't change it entirely. The roots were tangled and needed a lot of work, so I had to do it this year. Some of the roots were so thick I needed a saw to cut them off. Wherever nursery this was grown, they didn't care about the roots, the circled around and around... Still could have gone back to the bigger pot. The pot where it is right now has space for root growth still though, the roots aren't crammed in there.

leatherback wrote:

Here is another one.

Garden centre olive (www.bonsaiempire.com/forum/progressions/...ive-that-got-smaller?)

June 2013:


And last summer:

This and orlando's pine. Are one of the best examples I have seen of what can be done with simple material.

eangola wrote:

leatherback wrote:

This and orlando's pine. Are one of the best examples I have seen of what can be done with simple material.

Thanks. Just realize: All trees have simple beginnings. It is time, nature and patient application of skills with vision that create the bonsai. Using technique, you can achieve in mere years that what nature requires decades for. Yet, a truely iold work tree will always have a different feel to it over man-made trees. Still, also our own creations can become pleasing bonsai. I hope this olive will reach that over the next 5 years when it starts to mature.