A bit of a newbie question. I have a few nursery stock Chinese junipers that I’ve been trying to develop some initial pads on and had some questions around how to handle or developthe long green new growth. These longer wispy shoots seems to get a bit unruly.



I’ve tried to find some resources or watch videos but can’t seem to find much that covers this newer pad development.

What should I do?

Are you sure about the species?

Chinese Juniper in general grows compact by itself.

Here you really need to work the foliage, it is not easy. It is a balancing act between letting it grow stong, and pruning to get backbudding that is more compact.

Thanks for the reply! It is listed as a “sea green” Chinese juniper, which you can find at a lot of big box home improvement stores. These are probably not great bonsai specimens, but they were some of the ones I bought when I first got interested and I like trying to see if they can be improved.

I bought them a few years ago and the foliage definitely is a bit different than say a shimpaku.