I recently was fortunate enough to have some time learning from bonsai artist Michael Hagedorn. We styled a couple of trees, this one is a shore pine, Pinus Contorta Murrayana. It was collected in the Diamond Lake area near crater lake in the Oregon Cascades. I bought it as a nursery landscape tree in about 2011, root ball wrapped in burlap. When I got it home I removed about 30% of the field soil- mostly light sand-like degraded pumice, along with some bigger fist-sized chunks of pumice.

Quick aside- a few years ago Walter Pall was in town so I took this tree to a club meeting where he was to do some of his trademark ‘tree critiques’ or ‘talks’. I’ll always remember his opening comment about this tree, something like: “ah here we have another one from the lava flows.” Indeed!

Anyway, the tree was potted into a mix of pumice and turface and left to grow for the past few years. (I’ve since stopped using turface for many reasons)

Unfortunately I only managed to get 3 shots of the styling session, oh well. Here’s the tree after a fair amount of thinning (there were a TON of branches to chose from):

Closer:

After wiring everything and setting branches:

Like most trees it looks better in person. Now it needs a good pot in the spring, I’m thinking a simple round pot or slab of some sort would work well. will report in a few months