streda 27. marca 2019

MY 3 LARGEST JUNIPERS - BEFORE AND AFTER

2 and a half years ago I got me 3 junipers. Since they grew happily in their new home in zeolite, I have been able to repot them all since then and style them as well, each of them twice.
Here are the Before and After (or to be precise Then and Now) pics of them tu sum up their journey.
Number 1 was planted in original pot by Ivet Mikešová and I am happy with it, number 2 and 3 need to wait for their final pots another while.









pondelok 25. marca 2019

RESTYLING MY JUNIPER NUMBER 3

First styling was done a year ago, but at the repotting time a while later I noticed, that this tree might look even better from a different angle. So I repotted it over the weekend and positioned it differently, and as I didn´t cut a single root, I was able to restyle it right away. What are your thoughts on the new front?


after first styling


and after second styling over the weekend



PENJING WITH CARPINUS BETULUS

I collected this carpinus 3 years ago, and this landscape was created especially for one garden centre pinus compressa, but as I was a bit quick on it, it died unfortunatelly, and so I used it for this carpinus. Flowers are crocusses.






The pine that died. 

Landscape with carpinus.







piatok 1. marca 2019

CREATING MY BIGGEST PENJING TO DATE

2 years ago I decided that I would like to create one really large penjing with birches, and so in spring I went yamadori hunting and came home with some 8 birches, and these 3 were among them.





After 2 seasons of strong growth the time has come to order custom marble slab (or tray) for them.
Week later and it was brought home with the help of my dad, cause it was pretty heavy, measuring 115x80cm, 2cm wide.



Very next day I started to plan the landscape with the stones I collected from a forest creek near Smolník and I drilled 6mm wide holes for the wires.





After the landscape lines were created to my satisfaction, I used a special paint to make the stones surfaces and the spots where they were meant to be glued rough, otherwise the stones would come off after the next winter. Then the next day after the paint dried out, the time has come to glue the stones to the marble tray with the cement glue, that is usually used for gluing the tiles to the floors and walls of a buildings.


I left it to dry out for a day and the next day in the evening I removed birches from their training pots, trimmed some of the roots (minimal amount of them) and started positioning the trees onto the marble plate right after making the walls of IBUKI keto around the edges and filling the "islands" with pure zeolite, that I use for all of my trees.



I wired the trees to the marble plate and I decided to add one more little tree to the front - but since I haven´t drilled the holes there because I wanted to plant just some small grasses in there, the tree couldn´t be wired and I will have to drill the holes for it later - I am still considering wheter to leave the little tree there, as you should plant the large trees in front to create depth, but interestingly this little tree adds a nice feeling of depth to the piece anyway when seeing it live. I might just move it a bit to the right or left, so it is not in line with the tree at the back.

Applying Keto on top of zeolite (It makes zeolite to keep moisture longer when it is not exposed to the sun directly and the moss sticks to it better than to zeolite itself).



I applied the moss on the keto, watered it thoroughly and left it until 2 days later, when I found some time to make a proper photoshoot for the finished penjing.