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It’s been a while since i have grown Radiata pine. Early on in my collection i had a number but as i moved houses and the collection was scaled back each time the Radiata’s found alternative accommodation in other people’s gardens.

A couple of years ago i found myself in a pine forest, shovel in hand and figured it was time to get a few back into my own garden. I dug a couple of saplings with the intention of testing grafting white pine onto them (so far with no success. If you have had any success yourself grafting red, black, white or other pine species onto them let me know in the comments) but also freed from the shackles of the wild forest this tree that had a funny first bend and the beginnings of some nice bark.

Since digging it it has taken a couple of seasons to get it out of the terrible site soil and into a good mix. I also gave it a first styling last year sometime which for some reason i cant find any pictures of.

Recently, as i have been working through my other trees this radiata found it’s way back onto the bench to be de-wired and the secondary branching re-wired.

As you can see from the above it is still very early days but i do enjoy the unusual branch setting of this tree combined with the strange lazy first bend.

I am still experimenting with how i go about managing the foliage which i might post about when i work things out a little more.

As far as the future of this tree i think i could get it looking pretty close to the below sketch in a few more growing seasons.

Not sure if it will every be a truly excellent tree but for now i enjoy playing around with it and i do find it interesting to look at which will likely see it stay on my benches.

Radiata make great bonsai and as they are an invasive weed in our native forests they are an excellent candidate to dig up, gaining good material for yourself and ridding some native forest of a weed. Everybody wins!

They grow fast and strongly, take a lot of bending and other abuse, have great bark that develops fairly quickly, bud back and make good bonsai, get out there and grab yourself one!