Like many of us in the U.S., I looked down on juniper procumbens as good bonsai material. Seeing too many bad bonsai from bad specimens soured me on this Japanese native species. The generally uninteresting trunks coupled with poor refinement and pruning soured me on these trees.

I did have one shohin tree I created when a friend showed up one day with a couple of trees he bought for us to play. Six or seven years later, this is a satisfying tree that remains interesting to me.

When I saw these thoughtfully-grown procumbens at Ryan Neil's Bonsai Mirai this spring, I decided to acquire some to use for teaching. These trees are like yamadori with their interesting, natural trunk movement; even some deadwood.

Here's another tree I decided to style myself. As a single-trunk tree, it stood out from the others. It was a blast to style.

There are still a few left for group or individual workshops. Email me if you'd like to work on one.

Here's the tree in it's raw, unstyled state.

And here's the final first image. In the future I'd like to narrow the width of the foliage as the deadwood is refined and sharis developed.