I had Ben here for a one to one session today. He brought this big Japanese Larch with him. He collected it with us a few years ago and it had grown strongly under his care. This is the tree as collected.
This was it at 12pm today. The session saw us having to make a few decisions.
Ben was keen to make a twin trunk image but the two main trunks were both similar in size and thickness. We talked through the options and eliminated the faults leaving everything else for wiring.
A few bends were added to improve the trunk line to the apex and we shaped it to create this first styling image, and as you can see, it’s a twin trunk, just not the trunk that was expected.
This was it at 5pm.
Before and after
Bonsai Eejit 
The area that is bound in raff and bent to the right I think it should be bent in the opposite direction. It looks a bit man made when bent your way. Otherwise great potential.
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Hi Brian, thanks for your input. I’m not sure what you mean about the other way. The raffia’d portion of the main trunk moves two ways, forwards, as it was leaning back, and to the right as the whole flow of the tree is to the right side to match the second trunk. That portion was bolt straight. It will always look a little manufactured, as it was, but when the raffia is off and the tree relaxes a little, I think it will be less obvious as the foliage fills out. I would have preferred to shorten the top portion above the raffia, but there wasn’t any suitable option there so another bend was created to mirror the flow from the base up. I can see this being reduced in about two years time as foliage and new growth allows.
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Fantastic nebari! Looks really well.
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Going to be a powerful tree in a few years. Did you recover from shock on Friday night ? 🙂
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Eventually…I should know to trust your judgement by now!
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Nice work guys. Great idea Ian using the branch as the other trunk.
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