This Forestiera Neomexicana – New Mexico Privet is one of my favorite trees. I found the tree at the Longmont Tree Farms. This nursery find was what I call a no brainer, go get a cart and load her up. It had a very nice trunk, nice roots and lots of branches. The price was very reasonable to so why not bring it home?
I left the tree alone for a number of years and had to cut it back several times as the grow fairly fast. I was watering the tree and it suddenly dawned on me what to do with the tree and that was make it into a weeper. My only concern with doing that is its going to take a lot of maintenance to keep it as a weeper. Well I don’t work and I have nothing but time on my hands, so why not.
In 2018 I gave it its first styling as a weeper and it looked pretty good. It wintered in the garage and leafed out in spring (2019) and grew pretty good. I incorporated some of the new branches into the design. The new branches of course were growing straight up pretty much like I thought they would. I potted the tree into a Bonsai pot before the tree leafed out to. The tree did not mind being repotted at all. I did some moss to the surface of the soil. I placed a screen over the moss to protect it from animals and also to keep the sun off it. See my page on Moss to learn more about this technique. I brought the tree into the garage for a photo and left it in the garage to long. It did drop a lot of leaves before I put it back outside. Duh!!
The tree recovered just fine but was still somewhat leaf barren. I entered the tree into the local show anyway. I probably should have waited another year. The tree is wintering again in the garage. This time the tree is sitting under a bank of fluorescent lights. Last year I kept a number of trees with moss on them under fluorescent lights to help keep the moss green. It worked really well.
Updated 10-24-2021:
Not much has happened with the tree except the wire is now starting to bite in on the trunks/branches. I will remove the wire and see if the branches stay in place? I am hoping they will stay put except for newer branches. The tree is now in its fall colors of yellow, a soft yellow color. The tree has dropped a lot of it leaves already and they just fall off now with just the lightest of touch or wind.
Gallery 10-24-2021:
Tree on display at local show 9-8-2019:
Forestiera neomexicana – New Mexico Privet Bonsai 09-08-2019
Tree gallery page 6-23-2019:
