So.. Today I finally placed the order for some saplings.

40 Acer Campestre
30 Prunus Avium

In my garden I can probably find 10-20 Tillia Cordata which I will also put together. Excited to see how this works out. When I get them I will put some pictures online.

J.

Can't wait!

Well, considering the weather we have been having the last 6 weeks or so, I never did receive the saplings. As soon as night-time frost leaves for more than a few days I should be getting my order. Meanwhile, as I have not seen much activity on this competition, here an example of some work I did today, just to get your attention, and get going on your submissions.

I decided to grab some Tilia cordata seedlings (2-3yrs old) which I had sitting in my garden, unsure what to do with. So I went out today, grabbed them from my garden and put them together.

As they sit in the garden:


Sitting in a tub of water to keep the fine roots moist


I tied them together with very fine wire, and alternating between saplings. This way I created little batches of saplings wired together; Just keeping them small for comfortable wiring.




And finally I inserted the lump of tied-together saplings in a pond-pot; This I will in spring plant in the garden.

hey jelle,

just a tip for you and everyone else... tightly wrapping the trunks with raffia or nylon ribbon will force the trunks to fuse. leaving them unbinded will only leave you with a bunch of trunks and a mass of tangled roots.you can also take smaller bunches farther up the "trunk" and bind them seperate to form branches.it should look mummified leaving openings for buds to sprout

love the slant style it looks good already

What difference would raffia make compared to the wiring I did so far?

as you know wired branches will cut if the wire is kept on too long . the seedlings too will do this when they swell.wrapping them tightly and completely will cause the swelling to fill any gaps left in the wrapping and force them together with no other room to move outwards thus fusing the trunks.

basically you can take 50 to 100 seedlings and tailor make a tree branches and all with perfect radiating roots in as little as 5 years. the master of our bonsai group has been perfecting this technique for years and just recently finish a paper on it.i havent read it yet or seen his trees in person so this is going on what he has told me.makes sense to me tho

Cool. You have a different technique; Please enter a tree the way you describe in the contest. I am going to do mine with wires. And by next year we can see which method works best

Note that my wires are 0.3mm thick: I expect that the seedlings will just grown over de wire within weeks after comming out of dormancy. But only time will tell. Even if they leave marks: After 2 years of explosive growth even wire marks of 2mm wire would be gone (These seedlings will go from 1cm to 2cm diameter within one growing season, if left unchecked)

interesting approach...i will be entering the contest i am just not sure what i am going to use as of yet .i will be ordering a j maple species a stewartia with purple leaves and maybe some bald cypress. i will be fusing all of these ,but will submit my favorite . can't wait to see everyone results

So.. here the entry..

I purchsed 2 year old prunus avium and Acer campestre plants. They were well matured with loads of roots. The grower has clipped the roots after one year, resulting in many side-roots.

In order to be able to get the trunks close to one another I decided to trim the roots on two sides. Furthermore, I removed most of the side-branches leaving only one side-branch per plant.

Using a .5mm plastified wire I tied the plants against eachother. I tried using a wire frame, but decided against it in the end.

Now both of the groups are planted in the garden, waiting for spring to come.

how many trees jelle ? ...wish the ground wasnt frozen here but will be ordering my batches next week