Field Maple Bonsai Forest Planting Progression

This forest planting was begun in 2012 from pencil thin, bareroot Acer campestre hedging stock, sold as a discounted bundle for £5 at a general garden and hardware store. The trees roots were cut back to just a few laterals and grown on in groups of three in pots for a couple of years, before being cut back hard and planted together in a rough placement based on their vigour and form. They were then grown again as a group, fertilising hard and allowing a full seasons growth each year before hard cut backs. 

This is the group in 2016, with my two young assistants doing some root work. From this point on I focused more on branch placement and started to use wire and selective pruning. 

In 2019/2020 I felt the group was ready to begin refinement, fertiliser was reduced (nothing before the first spring flush was complete) and I pinched out every bud upon opening. In 2021 I pinched again in spring, fully defoliated the trees at the end of may, and pinched the buds a second time as they emerged towards the end of June. 

This was the result in November 2021. By this point I had incorporated some carboniferous limestone to evoke a shallow soiled calcareous forest.

I decided that in Spring 2022 I would undertake a major repot, rearrange the tree placement through rotating the two groups and moving a slim tree from front to back. 

In the process I wanted to enhance my emergent vision of a path through a woodland. After 5 hours of root work and jiggery-pokery later, this was the result. Now the trunk placement is better, the lines and movement better, and the impression of depth to the composition enhanced. Now for more twig ramification and in a few years time a much better pot (though for the meantime this Korean mica-plastic composite is way better than the sawn of recycling bin it was developed in).