After just spending a long weekend with Robert Steven last month, I’ve been rumaging through my trees and restyling almost every tree!

I learned a lot thanks to Robert, mainly, finding the tree that the material is telling you to find.

What I was taught was that, the material will show you it’s potential, while not in those words, that’s how I took it onboard.

That the material often shows you the most interesting features and directions, you just have to look and play around with all possibilities to find it.

I also learned about the way trees live, and settle in nature. Settling meaning the way they present themselves after being exposed to the environment in which they grow for a long period of time. Is a tree flat all over? Does it have near-perfectly even pads all around? Does it have to be styled in an exact and certain way, following rules or guidelines?

For me the answer, is definitely, no.

However I believe everyone has their own style, and signature to their art or trees, whatever they prefer to call it and that’s great! If everyone’s trees were the same, for me personally, bonsai would be boring.

But instead you have the best of all styles, be it, Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, etc. If you’ve ever travelled overseas to view bonsai you would definitely realise how different each country is in styling their trees, especially for their country’s natives.

Like always though, poor care and poor techniques are the cause for poor bonsai.

So with this knowledge, I am really loving the more natural look, while I’m not really that great at it – yet -, I’m definitely enjoying the process of broadening my knowledge and growing alongside my trees,

Here’s a few trees that I’ve restyled recently, including a juniper that I did with the guidance of Robert Steven.