Penjing/bonsai Part II: Multiple Reduction-Building to Depict 'Nature's Bonsai!'

摘要

No masterpiece bonsai was ever started in an introductory bonsai course. Bonsai is a long journey and almost all long-lived pine and juniper masterpiece bonsai began as collected trees already hundreds of years old that we call "Nature's Bonsai." This article summarizes my efforts over the past thirty years to create Nature's Bonsai in a nursery with long-lived, slow-growing podocarpus with very different traits compared to the plants in my past articles. It's a beautiful tropical tree that is called "Yew Pine" in Japan. Podocarpus macrophylla 'Maki'is used extensively for hedges with plants twelve inches apart in dense staggered rows. When pruned, it can completely block visibility in just an 18" wide hedge and this is a valuable landscaping trait in a country where space is at a premium. Podocarpus is also beautifully trained into Japanese garden landscape trees.