Let us begin with this Vicary privet — Ligustrum vicaryi. It was collected in 2015 from my own yard, recovered in a large wooden box, and has had some initial styling decisions made including reducing from seven to three trunks, and some structural wiring.
This variety is not as truly evergreen as some other privet varieties, but it will hold onto green leaves especially through a mild winter. This winter (in Virginia, USA) has been extremely mild, and the plant is ready to go with large buds that are starting to loosen.
It’s time to get this tree out of this box and into a ceramic pot… but, oh man, wouldn’t it be cool if we could remove the sides on ceramic pots as easily as we can for a wooden box.
Well, that doesn’t work, but removing some screws allowed me to start removing soil from a pretty nice looking mass of roots.
I did some significant root pruning to reduce the size of the root mass to fit the pot, but it was almost all tender fine growth which bodes well for the health of the tree. To get the root mass down to size, I did have to cut one larger root that extended too far out the back to make sense in just about any pot. I think it fits nicely in this hand-made pot where it can begin its next phase of development.
I did not barefoot the plant. There was still a lot of good structure to the old soil, so I left much of it in favor of a gentler repot. The soil I added to the pot is lava, pumice, and akadama.
Finally, I removed some sacrifice branches and did a gentle trim to reduce the growing demands that will be placed on these newly pruned roots. The tree needs more pruning and a full wiring, but I am going to wait to do that work later in the season after I see it has recovered well from repotting.
That’s all for now!
Bonsai Iterate 
Reblogged this on Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog.
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