Around 2007 my landscape company did a project for one of the Nordstrom brothers in Medina. To date this is probably the largest landscape project I’ve done since going full time with my business. They were building a new home at a water front property with some very mature trees. Except for a few trees, most of the trees were going to be cut down and composted. One those trees is this dogwood tree that is very healthy but badly pruned. I decided to take a gamble and saved it. Planted it in the ground and just let it grow for about 6-7 years.
It continued to be healthy and thrived and it would have been an awesome tree as a landscape tree but I think it will be even more amazing as a large bonsai tree. And so that’s what I decided to do. In 2012, I experimented cutting back some of the large branches while still on the ground. It responded very well with multiple new branches on the lower trunk. In January this year, I dug the tree and planted it the large wooded box that its currently in now. This year more branches grew while I left the older larger branches on (I was going to air layer one of them but didn’t have the patience to wait for it). On black Friday (yesterday) I continued to do some more rough carving on the trunk to reduce the bulky branches. This seems to be a very strong growing tree with course ramification. My observation is that as the tree continues to ramify, the leaves gets smaller and the branches become finer. This tree has white pinkish flowers and beautiful golden fall color. It should be an interesting tree in the future. I will wait another year to repot to a smaller container. Continue to refine the wood carving and ramify it. Excited to see what it will become. I sketched my rough idea what it may look like.
