How Do You Shape Your Bonsai Through Pruning?

Shaping your bonsai through pruning is very achievable, and actually pretty simple, it just takes time.

This is often something beginners really struggle with, but if you just take things step by step and slowly build out your tree from the trunk outwards, you will realise that it’s not too hard, the difficult part is waiting for the tree to grow so that you can prune it back again.

If you just take things methodically, you will prune your tree to the shape you want.

You Can Not Shape A Tree In One Session

I think it is important to set the right expectations …which means you need to understand that you can’t shape a bonsai all in one go.

You really can make a bonsai with a great shape through pruning, it just won’t be immediate. You can certainly make a lot of progress at times. Some trees may look pretty close after one session, but the majority of trees will need a little more time and work.

As with anything in life, things won’t go to plan so don’t be surprised if you have to prune your trees a number of times before you start to see progress. Really all you can do is do as much work as you can, then see how it responds and go from there. So long as you stick with it over time you will make progress.

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Pruning Your Bonsai)

Start With Building The Main Structure

If you want to shape your bonsai through pruning then you need to start with a tree that has a good foundation and then build on this.

This means you can start with something like nursery stock or yamdori, where a lot of the tree will be developed, you can start by pruning back and revealing the foundation and then building from there.

You could also do this all yourself, by growing a tree from something small, but really all you would be doing is growing the tree to look like it was nursery stock or yamdori and then starting the pruning from there.   

Start With The Trunk

At the core of any bonsai is the trunk, so you need to establish that first. If the material you are using has a good trunk, then that is great.

If you are looking at a seedling, or some sort of other small tree, then the trunk may not be ideal. You can fix this by pruning …but you have to let the tree grow first.

Allow your tree to grow like crazy and when you are happy with the trunk thickness you can prune the tree right back to just the trunk.

From here you can you can go on to let it grow again and this new growth will be the start of the primary branches. 

Look At The First Branches

Once you are happy with your trunk, you need to develop the primary branches. These are just the branches that come off the trunk.

If you are using nursery material, then you should have a number of these already, but not all of them will be in the right place or will be ones that want to keep. You need to use the 7 basic pruning principles to go through and decide what you want to keep or remove. You should have some idea of what style you want the final tree to be, which will help you decide.

If you are growing the tree from seed and you have trunk chopped your tree back, then you will have to just let everything grow out again. The trunk will explode with new shoots and you can go through these and decide what you want to keep and develop using the same 7 principles.

Look At The Secondary And Tertiary Branching

Now you have your trunk and primary branches in place your tree will start to look like a bonsai, but it will still need a lot of work.

Basically now you need to build the secondary and tertiary branching, which is actually pretty easy to do.

You just need to let everything grow out and again use the 7 principles of pruning to either prune things back or leave them alone.

Just keep letting it grow and pruning it back and things will really start to take shape.

Does Anything Need To Be Wired?

While pruning can certainly get things to look good, don’t forget about wiring.

You can wire any part of the tree and it can really help speed things up. You can move branches into slightly different positions and get them to face different directions. Small changes like this really can change the look of the tree and more importantly help you achieve the shape you are looking for much more easily.

A lot of people seem to think you need to either wire, or prune …but you can do both and get the benefits of both.  Used together it can be a really powerful combination that will not only speed things up, but will also give you better results.

(You can read more about – When Should You Wire A Bonsai Tree?)

Look At The Silhouette Of The Tree

When you are pruning your tree it can be very easy to get in to close and just look at the individual branch that you are dealing with.

This can be fine, but really you want to take a step back and look at the silhouette of the tree and see what is actually going on as a whole.

This is also why winter is such a good time to work on the structure of your tree, all the leaves are gone and you can actually see what every branch is doing and how they work with each other.

This can really help you make pruning decisions and make sure you are actually heading towards the shape you actually want.

Use The 7 Pruning Techniques To Build The Tree Out

As you have probably already noticed, I have mentioned the 7 principles of pruning throughout this article.

These really do cover about 99% of all the pruning you will ever need to do and it doesn’t matter what stage of development you tree is at …if you use these core principles, your tree will make progress in the direction that you want.

I have covered these 7 main techniques in great detail in the following article – How To Prune A Bonsai Tree – A Beginners Guide.

You should learn these and get good at them, as these really will allow you to prune you bonsai to any shape you want.

Conclusion

Hopefully this explains how you can prune your tree to shape. Really the secret is to learn the basic pruning principles, and then start with the trunk and work your way out.

You will have to wait for things to grow out and develop which may take a few years, but so long as you stick to the basic principles you will get there eventually and you will end up with the shape you want.

(You can read more about – Can Bonsai Trees Be Pruned Too Much?)