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Ericoides False Cypress Penjing

front view

back view

Kifu water and land style

In June of 2009 at the Minnesota Bonsai Society general meeting I gave a two-hour presentation on the art of penjing and saikei. This was followed with a live demonstration on how to create a water and land penjing. I'm seen working on newspaper which just happened to be opened to the obituary page. Happily I'm still busy making these miniature lanscapes.
As part of the live demo I asked the audience to come forward and help me with suggestions on how to do the work, like how to arrange the seven trees. The crowd was very creative with their advice and we ended up with a 7-tree forest planting in a windswept style. A base layer of shohin soil was placed in the pot, followed with a mound of wet muck provided by the bonsai society. The seedling trees were trained for a year in a shallow plastic pot in shohin soil before planting them in the muck. Finally the muck was covered with tree moss and ground moss; small figurines of people and a hut were placed in the scene, and the water area was filled with blue aquarium gravel to imitate water. The final scene represents a rocky shoreline along Lake Superior in northern Minnesota.

The 1st stage of the penjing involves selecting an appropriate, shallow pot or tray and gluing rocks to the bottom. The glue was clear, silicone rubber cement. The rocks here are basalt collected along the north shore of Minnesota on the Willard Munger trail.

The end result of the live demo, which took about 1 hour to complete. Note the windswept style. Usually the wind blows off the lake, so the trees are leaning the wrong way, but leaning forward is aesthecically more pleasing. The smaller hut is placed in the back to lend depth of scale to the scene. The trees are too bushy and need some pruning and styling.

I decided to replace the water with green aquarium gravel instead of blue. And one of the trees passed away, so we're down to 6 trees. After pruning the foliage, and wiring a couple of trunks, the work is initially done. Now the trees need to grow before further styling. These trees are 'chamaecyparis thyoides ericoides' aka atlantic white cedar seedlings about 2-4 years old.

Click on images to enlarge

Spring 2010 1 year later