A 'Thunderhead' I've been seeing every year for some years that got planted in a Seattle traffic island increased in vigor after establishment and is now perhaps 15' tall, if not more - I have not stopped and walked up to it, it may now be taller than I realize. As often happens with slow-growing or compact conifer cultivars the specimen became more coarse and orthodox in growth as time went on - I know it to be a 'Thunderhead' because I saw it soon after it was planted, looked like other examples in outlets at the time. Part, if not much of the time supposedly more restrained forms will be likely to be growing out of character due to the influence of non-dwarf seedling root-stocks.

there arent many thuns that live very long in MI ... slowly but surely.. they all seem to croak ... HOWEVER.. this one seems the exception ... but it does need to be cleaned out often ... if i were to try to save you a buck.. i would suggest you skip thunbers ... BTW... have you made a trek to gee tree.. and their TEN ACRES arboretum ... you want to see stuff in person.. that is the place to go ... get on I94.. and head west to Jackson.. get off at teh state prison jackson road exit.. and head about 8 miles north ... its basically.. it he middle of BFE ... lol ... ken

Your weeping larch looks real nice Garen as does the thunderhead and everything else. I planted one (larch)this spring and while I think it will make it long term (showing new growth) it is definitely ragged looking and brown in more places than I would like to see. Lolol I'm not the only one who plants in neighbor's yards. I've got a 980 foot property line and have planted about 20 conifers (so far, hardly done) on one of my neighbors property. My number one goal with my land (and hers lol) is "dense conifer 'forest'" in 40 years, the bigger and taller the "forest", the better. She loves it as she's also very into gardening and trees/conifers. Free trees, wish I could get some.

I have a picture of Dave DeWire giving a talk about the Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection at the Rhododendron Species Garden in Federal Way, Wa. It was the last day for public viewing at that time and I was lucky enough to get a picture. I took a picture of almost all of the collection that day also. For some reason Dave doesn't want to load. :-( I don't look at bonsai sites and haven't for quite some time. Sorry. Think of Niwaki as giant Bonsai. It's just a matter of paying attention to scale. If I had a smaller garden I would do a lot of Niwaki and some Bonsai too.