Lonicera bonsai skeleton

This dwarf honeysuckle was a garden shrub that I posted about last year here.  I haven’t touched it in the year since it was repotted and took it along to club night on Friday to decide what to do with it.

It’s done well over the past year and before I started any pruning I thought I’d check the roots for an indication of health.

I wasn’t surprised to see it rootbound as I’ve noticed that water has been pooling on the surface for quite some time.  I’ll repot on another occasion but for now I decided to concentrate on the style of the future tree.  The apex of each trunk leaned backwards so I pruned each of those first.

The three trunks have always reminded me of a fork and the thinnest (on the right) also curves dramatically backwards compared to the very straight other two trunks.  I removed it and then on the remaining trunks I pruned away surplus branches so that there was only one at each node in a good location.

I’m now left with a formal twin trunk image that is more pleasing to my eye.  Future training for this year:

1.  Repot into a shallower container and change front.
2. Encourage sacrifice branches to grow on the lower main trunk to increase girth and improve taper.
3. Keep upper branching short.
4. Perhaps wire main branches later in the year.