Cloud pruning requires a lot of patience and several years of work to start getting full clouds.
The tree can be tilted, in different leaning positions to eventually give it an impression of age.
For upright trees, every other side branch is removed, giving the tree a contrasting appearance of dense clumps and airy spaces, a shape that conifers have naturally in Asia.
For the subjects having a creeping port, one will take care as far as possible, so that all the clouds are directed towards outside.
Cloud pruning in 4 steps
The Japanese "cloud pruning" will be done in four successive steps:
- A first important phase which consists in studying the tree from all sides, from near and far, in order to evaluate and appreciate the existing structure at our disposal
- Then comes the phase of cleaning and pruning of the tree, in order to remove all the dead wood, the extremely thin branches that go in all directions...
- Then comes the phase of separation of the masses which will be used for the elaboration of the clouds and which will be carried out according to three great axes, i.e. the general movement, the direction and the size of the branches
- The clouds are then formed, then pruned and cut, in a regular way to obtain more and more dense clumps. Some clouds, even some branches, will be removed to obtain an elegant and harmonious subject.
Even if these trees are commonly called "garden bonsai" in the nurseryman's jargon, they differ from the bonsai culture, by the fact that the roots are not worked and remain intact. Thus the tree is not weakened and its growth is not limited, the "root" volume being always approximately the same as the leaf volume, in the plant world. They are eventually surrounded every three years if the tree is in the ground, in order to be able to move it or to put it in a pot more easily.
