Usually a group planting has an odd number of trees. John Naka has a good
section on group plantings in his first book, Bonsai Techniques".
The other thing that makes a grove look good is a variety of sizes of
trees. You can plant a grove, adjust the heights of the trees and wait for
the differences in trunk thickness that will occur over time or you can
plant the stock in a variety of sized pots and develop the girth before
doing the grove. I have heard of taking as long as 5 years to specifically
develop stock for a group planting. This would include developing girth as
well as a shallow root pad.

In a classic grove, all the trees should be visible and not in straight
lines. So triangular offsets are used to create a feeling of depth. There
are mathematical methods as well as metaphoric methods to assist in
arrangement. Sango Kaku has lovely read bark in the spring before leafing
out. It does this on younger growth. Perhaps you should plan to prune in
a manner that encouraged the tree to show this characteristic.

Kitsune Miko
Old Fart
Somewhere in the SF Bay Area

At 07:22 PM 8/23/2003 +1000, humanfly wrote:
I have purchased 12 sapling "sango kaku" japanese maples - I believe they
are also called coral bark. I intend to do a forest planting on slate.
The trees are very young and whippy. I have been looking through my bonsai
books for plant postioning for a 12 tree group and am still somewhat unsure
of which direction to take as i have not yet tried a group. Can anyone refer
me to an online tutorial or images of a 12 tree group/forest style planting?

I have posted the slate base in the IBC gallery it is under the
"Genus/Species?" heading. I have lifted the ash from the slate and potted
up. I want to use this base for my group.

Thanks

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