Giant Spruce

This huge Spruce (Abies Picea) was collected in the Alps and is with me from 2010. The first initial styling and basic branch selection was done last year. At that point I only focused on the positioning of the primary branches and in addition only wired some of the secondary branches to get a basic silhouette and more light for the remaining branches. 

Spruce yamadori starting material in 2010

Now it was time to make the next step and define the crown a bit more in detail, define the empty spaces, select the branches and start to build a good basis for the branch structure. 

If you work on yamadoris you have a starting material with many good characteristics but in most cases with some bad as well. In this case, the original upper part of the trunk was dead with great natural deadwood. This dead trunk is a nice and interesting focal point of the the tree, but on the other hand its completely straight and boring. So based on this I decided to anyway highlight this dead wood as an point of interest, but design a dynamic crown with lots of rhythm.

Spruce (Abies Picea) after three years of training

The crown needs lot more detail and lots of time to develop, but for now I'm happy with the development and the current image of the tree.