Japanese Black Pine PW

I nickname a few trees after the pros who have worked on them.  I have a Ben Oki azalea, and a Peter Warren Black Pine.  This is how it looked a year after I bought it from Brussel’s in 2010.

And during the initial styling; where my daughter was a lovely and able assistant:

Taming a big bushy black pine is more than should be tackled in a single workshop, so Peter made some decisions on the front, moved some primary branches, and we made a plan for the future.  

Little did we know he would have an opportunity to return in 6 months and revisit the tree, which now looked like this:

And we advanced the design a bit to this:

Skip forward 5 years to fall 2016, and I’ve continually pushed growth back toward the trunk, and replaced big branches with finer ones.  I’ve had several failed graft attempts, and finally settled on just building a good branch structure to cover the upper trunk section that has no taper and no branches.  Fall 2016:

And in the spring of 2017, thin out the needles, prune branches back to pairs, and wire to fan out the branches into pads:

And repotted to improve the planting angle and depth.

This summer, it will be candle-pruned to get a second flush of smaller needles, and increased density.  Eventually it will be ready for a quality pot and proper placement in said pot.  For now, it’s just time to grow!