Vision and entropy
Making a more orderly boxwood, even without a plan.
I bought this boxwood as a practice tree in my early bonsai days. I never developed a plan for what to do with it. One day I started hacking and snipping and wound up with a tree that was smaller and probably worse off than before.
Since then I’ve let it sit on the back burner. A little guy wiring to shape obvious lateral branches. Some pruning at the end of the growing season. Mostly I’ve left it alone, until it became this Selma Bouvier tuft of a topiary. A few weeks ago, with frosty nights safely behind us, I decided it was time to get back to work.
Thing is, I still had no idea what I wanted to achieve with this boxwood. It was starting to look like something, but what? I can’t take much credit for what you see here. All I did was cut branches back. The tree took care of the growth.
In the public imagination, bonsai is a rigorous discipline powered by an artist’s singular vision. As I’ve learned more about bonsai, I’ve happily found that such a directed mindset will only get you so far. A lot of the process is waiting for a tree to tell you what it wants to do.
An absence of vision for the boxwood’s future hasn’t prevented me from enjoying it in the present. I like this little tree. It has mature-looking bark for a youngish specimen, and the nebari is spreading nicely. Boxwoods are naturally perfumed with an earthy musk. The wee tree’s outstretched arms invite you in for a sniff.
With no clear plan, I stuck to basic bonsai rules. Turns out you can get far by following them. Prune back to just a pair of leaves. Reduce branch junctions to two offshoots. Trim any inward or upward growth. Working by rote took away the fear, the loss of opportunity from a newly severed branch.
Eventually I wound up with this.
The balance is off and there’s no clear apex, but I like it well enough.
I still don’t have a vision for its path forward. I’ll have to trust the tree to do its job and fill in this bare profile with fresh growth. New branches will give me new opportunities for the next stage of the tree’s design.
Next spring I’ll root prune the boxwood and transfer it to a smaller bonsai pot. Maybe by then I’ll have an idea of what to do it. Probably not. Truth is, I’m enjoying the lack of control. It’s good to put your trust in trees.
Tree reading
A photo essay on Nigeria’s logging industry, where demand has grown beyond what forests can bear. [Al Jazeera]
The simple question of how a tree places new leaves involves so much fascinating math. [The Plant Cell]