Saturday, August 7, 2010

mugo pine #33 crucial bending

Two years ago I got this great mugo pine. It was collected in the 1990ies in Switzerland. It was styled but not to total satisfaction. So it found it's way into my garden. It looked quite weak and I inspected the root ball. Then I decided to pot it into better substrate into a new pot and new position right away. Already then I had planned to drastically bend down the awkward looking last part of the trunk eventually. It took two years for the tree to look healthy enough for this procedure. This tree is way over 100 years old and the trunk is full of old extremely stiff deadwood. To just bend it brutally would men to break it right away. So I had to be a lot more crafty. As one can see I cut a deep groove. Then it was not a big deal to bend it to the desirable position. The guy wire will have to stay for about five years. The crown can be styled in one year. The deep groove will remain and will have to be carved to appear credible eventually. The tree may well be planted into one of these new pots by Mateusz Grobelny.