There was a comment in one of the videos (not by Ryan but by P. Warren) i found quite fitting. If you prune it like a hedge you get, well a hedge.
As stated before by others, to each there own. So whoever wants to deal with their trees their way, that is perfectly ok (and not to start a side topic, but there is a statement out there along the lines of make it a bonsai or kill it). The thing i do disagree is the the argument of only the final result and time achieved in counts. Well, for some this more about the journey and not the destination so much.
My issue with Mr. Pall is, that everything (now?) seems to be about the bold statement. Repottings have to be done with the big electrical hecksaw. Even his wife can water all the many many trees in 30mins now (modern substrates, one size seems to fit all because overwatering now is impossible). His garden has many hundred trees. And yes, hedge pruning. Why spend time and sit down with your tree when you can have it grow out and come down on it with a large pair of pruning shears to randomly and quickly cut back. His trees better than mine, most likely. His experience vastly greater than mine, sure. Do i have to subscribe to his approach though? Well for me, no. But, ymmv.
I don’t see any of WP’s trees look like hedges, either in summer or winter silhouette. There are plenty of trees and images to analyse. And yes, if you (were to) treat them like hedges, you (would) get hedges. But despite the name of the technique, the most important step is to perform branch selection in the fall each year. The tree never gets a chance to become a hedge. What do happens is that you have the choice of what branches to keep and which to remove - a luxury in bonsai standards.
By the way, all the six bloodgood Japanese Maples in the original video can be seen again after styling and branch selection in the fall. You can see how much ramification I got in one year of development. These trees were collected off the ground as stumps in the spring of 2018, let grow to recover untouched all 2018, then started being trained in 2019. So all that is 1 year of training essentially. Check in the video below and if you’re interested, there are 5 more videos of the other trees.
In my opinion the difference is speed. Otherwise hedge pruning is similar to the grow and cut back, grow and cut back, etc method that a lot of deciduous practitioners use.
One big thing missing from the critique (I think) is that Walter makes a big point about coming back through after leaf drop to more accurately prune the tree and fix a lot of the issues you can’t see when leaves are on the tree.
The actual hedge pruning is only half of the process.
(As someone has already stated) I can only recall it being mentioned once and it was when Ryan asked Peter Warren what he thought about it. Peter’s response was “it looks like a hedge”.
If you ask Walter Pall - and you can see him saying it in a number of videos in youtube, he will say yes. You will develop your tree faster. I am under the impression that @Ryan is not against using this technique in development but he is in favour of pinching for refinement - but don’t quote me on that, better ask Ryan - or maybe he touches on that in the podcast with Walter Pall that is supposed to be released this Friday.
That’ll be an interesting episode. On Instagram WP spoke highly (which is putting it lightly) about the Mirai collection. I think he’d be okay with ppl not using his techniques…or maybe just Ryan lol.
One thing for sure. Bjorn is probably a better Practioner of Bonsai than most of us on here. I’m not defending or complaining about anyone here, robust discussion is a good thing. I think the one thing to come out of this is, do what you as an individual want to do. I really don’t believe that Bjorn was taking a personal swipe at Walter at all. He was expressing his thoughts , like we all can of a particular technique.
My research group works on structural computational biology, which is an area generally contained within what is called bioinformatics. Students that earn a PhD under my guidance would be hard pressed to work in other areas of bioinformatics (such as genome analysis) even though they have a PhD in bioinformatics. Keep in mind that bonsai nurseries in Japan are highly specialized. Some mostly or exclusively deal with the last step in the entire chain and that is to maintain and further refine highly developed trees. I think this is the case of the nursery where Bjorn worked. So one has to consider, how many raw deciduous trees has he actually worked on in 9 years in Japan? We mere mortals, perhaps agonized in front of a deciduous stump and developed it far more often than Bjorn with all his training. I point this out to mention that even professional bonsai training can be specialized.
If you take shears to your tree and cut blindly at branches without regard to leaves and internode then it’s the hedge pruning technique. If you go and cut back and are selecting locations on branches where you will be cutting then, I would say its more likely informative pruning because tour making choices about where to cut.The goal is the same with both… Developing ramification. The tree will continue to grow either way… If it is healthy… And should push another flush. Each subsequent flush should be finer as the tree should be exhausting resources each time.The increasing ramification is growth which helps with developing girth of trunk and branches while still creating taper. Every fall despite the method of pruning still need to address flaws and refine the silhouette.
At the end of the day if the focus is growth and girth, just let everything elongate until the desired result is obtained. When you want ramification then switch to some sort of pruning methodology… (Hedge, informative, clip and grow, pinching, whatever.)
Just my two cents.
I’m just happy to have more techniques available to choose from and do enjoy hearing people’s preference and experience with different techniques. But I don’t really get why it needs to divide people into camps around all this.
My own view from trial and error and drawing my own conclusions is that Hedge Pruning Method comes into its own when you’ve got a huge collection with a lot of trees to get through (such does Walter). If you’ve only got two-dozen trees in your collection and have the time to spend on them then perhaps it’s not as relevant.
Additionally, I’ve personally observed that on certain species it’s less suitable, while for other species it’s much more suitable. Field maple (Acer campestere) for example has large and straight internodes that very seldom back-bud along the internode. I can’t see myself getting the quality results I want by using HPM on my campestres.
Interesting info on Acer campestre, I note however that I thought and was told previously that bloodgood had that same characteristics but I did got small internodes and ramification with HPM (thanks for the acronym, will use it from now) even in the big boxes where mine are growing at the moment.
