Natural or Human Design

Let’s say you have trees that you left out for the winter, wired or unwired. If you had heavy snows during the winter, and some of the trees branches bent. Do you try to reorient them back to the way you arranged them, or do you go with natures design? Just curious as to what people think.

Ryan has talked about bringing the randomness of nature into bonsai design. I believe his comment was to assign tasks such as “remove the defining branch” to playing cards or a similar random method. When we collect yamadori we are allowing for all of the random acts of nature to shape our tree. It is only when we domesticate it that we try to prevent or correct those random acts.

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I’d take nature’s suggestion on board and keep it if I liked it. :laughing: I suppose it depends on the tree. But I’m more than likely I’d put the branch back. To me, the art, the enjoyment and the whole point is from being inspired by nature, processing it, and attempting to depict my interpretation of it. Personally, if I wanted to see what a series of random natural events will do, I would go for a walk and see nature’s work firsthand. :man_shrugging:t2:

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