In this blog post, we’re taking a trip down memory lane with Lloyd, Bonsai Expert from Bonsai Direct, and his 34-year-old Evergreen Lawson Cypress bonsai. Beginning with a throwback photo from 1997, just a few years into the tree’s journey, Lloyd reflects on how it has evolved and grown over the decades. Now, in October 2024, we can see the bonsai’s transformation into a beautifully refined masterpiece.
Lloyd demonstrates how to prune the foliage to preserve its natural shape, clean up the trunk, and refresh the soil, ensuring the bonsai stays healthy and vibrant. This fascinating process highlights the art of bonsai cultivation and the patience it requires.
Whether you’re a seasoned bonsai enthusiast or just starting out, this post is filled with valuable tips and insights on caring for and shaping these living works of art.
Transcription of Video about 26 year Transformation of this Stunning Hardy Evergreen Lawson Cypress Bonsai Tree
Hi, everybody. So the other day I was rummaging through some old drawers trying to find something, which I didn’t find, but I did find something else, which was very interesting. And it was this. Okay. It’s an old photograph. Going right back to 1997. So what was the photograph? Well, here it is. The photograph was taken in 1997, and I can remember starting styling this tree. And it must have been around about 1990, something like that.
I had just bought my first house and I remember being out in the garden. I thought it was great. I’ve got my own house, got my own garden, and I can do my bonsai on my own. So that was brilliant. So it was lovely to find this photograph. And so I thought, well, probably what we should do now is have a look at the tree and see what it’s like. So let’s have a look. Here he is. I’ll show you the photograph again. As you can see so it’s 2024 now, October 2024.
He’s grown a fair bit. It’s a Lawson’s cypress, and I think it’s looking fantastic. It was lovely to find the photograph, because you do forget what they started off with. And going back then, in the 90s, of course, photographs weren’t as readily available. We didn’t just have phones we could snap away with. So to find an old print was lovely. I’ll just show you around. Take a look at the trunk here now. I’ll put the photograph up so they are side-by-side. You can then compare it at the time in 1997 to now in October 2024.
Take a look at the amazing trunk of this 34 year old Cypress Bonsai Tree
You can see the size of the trunk now. It’s got this beautiful bark. It’s absolutely stunning. It has nice thick branches down here. And I just keep these pads just sort of pruned here. I haven’t tried to keep everything out flat because it just wants to grow upwards. It’s a very upward growing tree. It doesn’t like to fan out, like pines and some of the junipers and, and even like the elms, where you get these foliage pads. All I do is define the branches by just doing some pruning around here. But I still like to keep the overall shape of what the cypress tree would look like.
They are very conical trees – upward growing. And I just put a little bit of shape in it just to sort of give it a little bit of interest to find the branches. And it’s looking really good. So it’s due a prune now and you can see we’ve got some little shoots popping out here. I will just go through with my finger and thumb and pinch it out. If I get a few heavier shoots that get a little bit too thick and too heavy, I just carefully prune them down with pruning scissors – just to maintain the shape.
Clean out old leaves to allow light into the dense foliage of the Cypress Bonsai Plant
I also need to clean other old leaves from other trees as well. And I go in there every now and again and clean out some of the old foliage that’s died off down below. And that allows me to keep some light in there, get the light in the air back into there, because it’s very thick, dense foliage. So let’s spin them around and you can have a look. Okay. It’s a moss growing on down here. I cleaned some of the moss off because I like to be able to see the bark and I let some moss grow, especially around the bottom here. So I probably get in there and give that all a bit of a scrub up.
Clean up the soil surface
I have also noticed that the soil surface needs a bit of a clean up. Take the topsoil off, put some fresh soil on. Redress it, to make it look really lovely and I think I’ll do that in a minute a to show you. So, I had intended to actually video the whole cleaning up process, but that turned out to be quite a long job and I thought that would be rather boring. But, I’ve just done some snippets. So here I am, just taking out the old foliage. You can see some of it dropping down there. It’s quite surprising how much came out actually. You can see how much old foliage has built up, as it’s covered the whole of the whole of the surface. And there’s quite a lot more on the table.
Pruning the Soft Tips of the Foliage of this Cypress Bonsai
So on to the pruning. I have some long handled bonsai twig shears here. These are nice and sharp. Very long, very pointy, very accurate to use; which is perfect because I do have to be quite accurate with my pruning. I try not to cut straight through loads of foliage and just try to get in between the leaflets, so as not to cause any dieback. Foliage die-back makes the tips look brown and pretty ugly and if you’re doing that all over the bonsai, it soon spoils the look of the bonsai. It doesn’t do the tree actually any harm, but it doesn’t look nice.
So you can see here I’m trying to be quite careful in pruning. This took about an hour to go through and prune this tree. And it needs doing several times a year, especially through the growing season, just to keep it in shape. So I hate to think how many times I’ve pruned this Cypress over the past 35 years.
A lovely fresh ‘pine’ like scent when pruning the Cypress Bonsai
I am now working my way up the bonsai. I always tend to start at the bottom and then work my way up. This particular tree has got a nice fresh scent to it. I suppose a lot of pine trees and cypresses and cedars, have a kind of nice fresh smell to them. I am carefully looking for any dominant shoots, to keep them under control. That helps to keep the back budding going, lower down the branches. I’ve had a quick clean up and I have taken off all the old leaves and things from here. We’ve got this big pile of old leaves. Look.
So now what I want to do is just do a little bit of scrubbing. I’ll take my toothbrush and some fresh water. I’ve got a bucket of fresh water down there, and we’re just going to do a little bit of scrubbing up here. Okay, so I don’t normally work at this speed, but I didn’t want people to start falling asleep while I’m just scrubbing the trunk. So I decided to work a little bit faster. You can see the bark really shining through now. You can see all the cragginess. And as I said earlier, I’m not taking all of the moss off, just sort of taking out bits, leaving bits. So it looks nice and natural, but that’s really starting to look lovely. So I’ve done the bottom of the trunk there so that we can see the difference.
Clean up the Soil Surface
Now, what I’m going to do is start to clean up the soil surface a bit. So, I have finished scrubbing the soil surface, and now I’m giving the pot a good wipe over, a good scrub off. Get that nice and clean as well. So I’m going to go into fast mode on this bit. Makes it look quite exciting. I like this bit because it just finishes it off and I find it quite rewarding. Everything looks clean and neat and the topsoil is all nice and fresh.
And it just smooth it off a little bit. And it looks fab. It looks really good. All right. So let’s have a close up. Let’s have a look up the trunk. See what’s going on up there. That looks sooo lovely. Well, it looks a lot better, lot smarter, a lot cleaner. I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. It goes to show what can be done. It does take a few years. There’s no such thing as an instant bonsai. But it’s the journey. It’s fantastic. And that’s one of the things I really love about bonsai. You can take something small, whether it’s a seedling, a cutting and you can grow it, nurture it, see it evolve over the years, and it just gets better and better. So I wonder what he’s going to look like in another 20 or 30 years. 100 years? I don’t know. So I hope you’ve enjoyed it and take care.
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