Today I started work on one of a few garden centre Chinese Junipers (var. 'Old Gold'), I bought in the sale a couple of months back. The trunk line seemed to suggest a potential cascade to me, and I had a small cascade pot just waiting for a tree - I seem to have more pots than trees! :)
First I opened up the trunk and main branches a little, and removed some of the weaker shoots/branches:
I then wired the lowest branch down:
However, I'm a bit hesitant about where to go next:
With reference to these colour coded cut options, my initial thought was to take out either the orange or yellow branches, then also the light and dark blue. I think this should remove any bar branch possibilities, and give a better taper at the top:
However, on reflection the best result might be the more drastic red cut... Is the red one too drastic? Would the tree likely die? Are there any other possibilities I should consider?
In the long term, I'm aiming for something like this: http://www.whitebearbonsai.com/product/14Juniper
