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The azalea

Here are some pictures of the azalea that is supposed to be planted in the blueish pot next spring. I received the tree in 2005, one of about ten trees I bought from a former club member, who no longer had winter storage for his trees. It didn't, as you can see from the first picture, have many branches at that point. It had lost several important branches, and there are still ugly scars after those.

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Autumn 2005

In 2006 I repotted the tree in kanuma, but didn't cut it back at all, I just tried to nurse it back to health. In 2007 it flowered with beautiful pink flowers and was after that cut back.

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Summer 2007

The azalea was again repotted in 2008, in kanuma again. The pot from 2008 is utterly unsuitable, a terrible colour that would have fought against the colour of the flower in the most ugliest way, if the azalea had been allowed to flower. The pot in itself is not bad, it's a very good work by German bonsai pot artist Peter Krebs, the colour is lovely, and very well suited for an other tree. But at the time it was the only one in the right size I had available, so I decided to use it. It was cut back heavily in spring 2009, but has grown wild for the summer. It will be cut back again in 2010, and repotted. I hope to be able to cut the roots more in order to enable me to repot the tree deeper in the pot. I think flowers can be allowed in 2011. Right now it need everything to build new branches, not to produce flower buds.

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Autumn 2009

Comments

Hi, nice surface roots indeed! Tree is looking really nice and healthy, trunk is quite a bit more mature than in 2005.

I like that pot a lot. It needs a tree with strength and character, I suppose. Deep green looks good with it, don't you think? Something with reddish brown trunk? What do you have in mind?

Thank you Jani!

It you are thinking about the Krebs pot, yes, I too think an evergreen could look good in it. I don't have anything special in mind for it right now. I bought it some years ago together with a couple of other pots, and the colours on the web site was not exactly as the pots were IR. So the idea I had when I bought the pot was to be changed. The danger of buying anything where colour matters from the net ;)