• Itoigawa and Shimpaku shohin bonsai foliage

    Building foliage pads Do you pinch or cut? That is not without importance how you control the growth and timing is essential to build up healthy foliage pads. The Japanese varieties of soft scale leaf Junipers are popular for Shohin bonsai. And not without reason.…

  • How to find the bonsai tree

    Creating bonsai from raw material can be a challenge. Finding and selecting the branches hidden behind a mass of foliage is the focus of the next episode. But that’s next week. Today the weekly tutorial is focusing on restyling a Shimpaku juniper I have grown…

  • Styling a shohin Juniper

    Next Monthly Theme at the videostudio will be a full styling demo with a pre-bonsai Juniperus chinensis.  Every detail of the styling is covered in a more than 40 minutes video, covering every aspect of aesthetical, technical and growing issues associated with the styling. Watch the…

  • Shimpaku upside down

    For a number of years I have been growing a small Juniperus Shimpaku, and followed the original position until now. The tree was purchased as a semi-finished piece at the Mansei-en nursery in Omiya, Japan, of late Saburo Kato in 2005, and mainly bought as…

  • The story of the Shimpaku Juniper

    It´s Secret History (English Translation © WBFF 2003; Original Japanese Text and Photos © Kindai Shuppan Co. 2003). Brought at Shohin-Bonsai Europe with permission. Header photo from Mansei-en, by Morten Albek. Behind the story. The original story was lost on the internet, but due to steady…

  • The story of the Shimpaku juniper

    It´s Secret History (English Translation © WBFF 2003; Original Japanese Text and Photos © Kindai Shuppan Co. 2003). Brought at Shohin-Bonsai Europe with permission. It is astonishing to realize that the Shimpaku juniper so beloved for bonsai culture was first found only a little more than…