Please enjoy this wonderfully aged Crape myrtle over its decade plus long bonsai journey. This blog post will mainly be a photo essay with just a few interjections.
An important note at the outset, this tree took much longer to bonsai than necessary and I'm eager to express my gratitude for the good instruction and help from my teacher Boon Manakitivipart that made this possible.
Summarily, this is a somewhat clumsy transformation and reflects my journey in becoming a bonsai professional.
2014 - Ground zero, a 15' tall nursery grown crape myrtle was trunk chopped and repotted.
2018 - With a bit of luck the largest wound was close to healing over. After cutting a few sacrificial leaders some taper was developing. We'll call the current sacrificial leader, leader #3.
2019 - Leader #3 has thickened nicely, time to repot and get all the organic components out of the soil.
2020 - Leader #3 was cut a few months ago, leader #4 has thickened enough to be chopped. A thread graft was added.
2021 - Leader #5 has now thickened enough to be cut. Bad branch structure has mostly been replaced by now.
2022 - Leader #6 cut, wire on, wire off.
Late 2022 - Leader #7 has thickened nicely and the main trunk line is done. We finally have the shin, or the very base of the tree where the roots emerge from, corrected. This is the soul of our bonsai. A few root grafts were added to improve the nebari.
2023 - Grow, wire the new shoots, dewire, cut back where needed, repeat.
2024 - Root grafts were successful, the tops were removed.
2024
Late 2024 - More of the branch structure was fixed, still room for loads of improvement.
2025 - Now that we've built enough branch structure and taper it's time to begin refinement and focus on ramification. If you want to take a shortcut, go the long way.
Hope you enjoyed, I'll update this post as the tree progresses.