Great Results in Just 8 Months!
2nd March 2010

by Richard Hankinson

Species: Larch

Origin: Yamadori

   History: The tree was recovered in winter 2007 by the society and bought by myself in May 2009. This is the first tree I bought after getting hooked on bonsai after attending the Grand Opening on May 14 th 2009 where I was in awe at the specimens and demos from Tony Tickle and Chris Thomas. .

	I chose this tree because of its potential to be a   great literati-style bonsai, and its wonderful old bark
The first styling of the tree was done on a warm sunny afternoon at the end of May 2009. I was told to do some drawings of the tree to show what image I had in my head for it. I showed the group my drawings and we discussed the ideas. Through the wisdom of the members I wired the tree and started to style with help from Chris, Jerry and Bob.
After the initial styling had been done with plenty of guidance from the guys at Dragon Bonsai I decided to try my hand at carving. Once I had built up the confidence to have a go I dived straight in. The picture above shows my development of the carving. The first and second photos show my first attempts at carving which I was very happy with. I then took my tree to a workshop and was advised to carve much deeper because the bark would callus over my carving, so I needed to carve channels to try and stop it covering my work. I took everyone's advice and did some deeper carving, and after leaving it weather for a couple of weeks I applied some Lime Sulphur to it.
Feeding : Through the summer I fed my tree Multi-purpose Miracle Grow liquid feed with an NPK value of 6-5-5. I fed it at half strength every week. This gave the Larch lots of growth through the summer.
	Re-styling and Re-potting: Between Christmas and New Year 2009 I took my trees to the Dragon Bonsai workshop. I started working on my larch, and Chris and I began to style and discuss our thoughts on the tree. After wiring the larch, the decision was made to place the tree into a new pot. We were contemplating either a rectangular pot or a rustic scene style pot, but once the tree was sat in the rustic pot it was clear that this was the one.

This is the tree's current winter image after just eight months of training: