Tree Species: Juniper
Owner: Bob Miller
Potter if Known:
History: The tree shortly after Bob got it.
Following a styling with Peter Warren and on display in 2018
In Bob’s own words: This juniper started its bonsai life as a small tree living in our shared garden. It had a lot of interesting dead branches due to its struggle to survive. At Twy’s (my wife’s) suggestion, I dug it up and planted it into a cut-down black plastic bin. It survived.
Ian then helped me with its repot into a cone-shaped metal fire pit with drilled drainage holes, which has been its home ever since. At the time I was not impressed with typical available bonsai pots and felt that the conical shape was more in keeping with the look I was after. It was a difficult repot as the roots were skewed to one side and it was necessary to insert a wooden block to stabilise the tree.
It was first displayed at a Botanic Gardens Autumn Fair (probably 2019). The basic display design . . . conical metal ‘pot’, a distressed steel frame made by me at Hot Milk Forge that suspends the tree over a large slate paving block, dark grey slate fragments rather than moss at a surface dressing, a sun-bleached fox skull as an accent . . . to my eyes ‘worked’ and I have stuck with it ever since. There was a bit of mystical background to this. I heard someone refer to the contrast of a juniper’s white deadwood with its red bark and green foliage as being like the difference between life & death, and that impressed me. Also, the fox (kitsume in Japan) is considered to be a kami, a divine animal that is a sacred messenger between the material and spiritual worlds.
The tree has changed considerably over time. It has been restyled twice during visits by Peter Warren to Ian’s workshop. (I believe my tree may be the first time Peter tried out the technique of using a steamer to melt the resin in deadwood to render it temporarily malleable.) After an epic battle over its removal, Ian now has a dried back branch, like trophy deer’s antlers, nailed to the wall of his workshop. The deadwood was expanded and extended by me (with much trepidation due to all I had heard about juniper having root to branch sap ‘veins’). The deadwood has darkened from brilliant lime sulphur white to a fissured grey and the live veins around the deadwood now form prominent ridges where they used to be almost flat.
The tree spent a while on show in Botanic Gardens Palm House but now resides permanently in the garden from whence it came. Twy considers it to be the spirit of our garden.