Rocky Mountain Juniper nr. 9

This Rocky Mountain Juniper was collected in Colorado in 1996. It came to Germany in 1999. For some reason it never grew much. It did not die but it refused to grow in length. There was very little foliage but the trunk and the dead branches were spectacular. The whole thing always needed a rather large crown. otherwise the trunk would appear too powerful. So the challenge was to make it start growing. In the fall of 2007 it was fed with a strong dose of chicken pellets (chicken do) and in spring of 2008 finally the spiking new shoots appeared. Thees are a 0prerequisite for this and related species to do serious staling. if you do it before the tree will just not like it and the branches will be sickish and maybe die. Anyway, in August 2008 the deadwood was edited again and the few branches were cleaned. Then they were wired. This is not a final styling. This is just a rough sketch to get one step further. Within the next years the crown will have to become much larger, as seen on the virtual.