Detailed Explanation of Shaping and Styling Techniques for Chinese Privet (Ligustrum quihoui) Bonsai

  Artistic shaping of garden plants is a technique in which garden technicians use ingenious concepts and adopt measures such as pruning and shaping, frame building and styling, and cultivation management to create beautiful artistic images with high ornamental value.

  Chinese privet (Ligustrum quihoui) plant shapes include architectural forms, animal forms, human figure forms, geometric forms, object forms, text forms, bonsai-style forms, and so on. These shapes greatly enrich the garden landscape and make the plant scenery more varied.

  Timing for shaping: Plant shaping is generally best chosen in spring and autumn, when there are many branches, good leaf density, and the branches are soft and easy to sprout leaves and shoots. However, for thick trunks and large bends, auxiliary objects such as bamboo poles and wire should be added to bend and fix them.

  Design principles: In the design concept of plant shaping, the basic principles of painting art and garden art should also be followed: namely the four major principles of unity, harmony, balance and rhythm. When shaping plants, the tree form, lines, texture and proportions should have certain differences and variations, while also maintaining a certain similarity among them, so that they are both lively and harmonious and unified. When designing plant shapes, attention should be paid to mutual connection and coordination, reflecting the principle of harmony, so that viewers experience a soft, calm, comfortable and pleasant aesthetic feeling.

  Shaping techniques: When shaping, first, according to the size and shape of the object being created, trees are planted together in a planned combination. Based on the environment and tree vigor, a creative concept is formed, and according to that concept some auxiliary frameworks are made. Finally, binding and pruning are carried out for shaping; or by using pruning to create lines and branches as the framework, shaping is done according to the tree, with artistic processing and beautification applied to create different forms of scenery.

  Collecting stumps: Chinese privet (Ligustrum quihoui) stumps can be collected in both spring and autumn, but the best time is in early spring just before revival. Stumps with nodes, bends, or obvious changes from top to bottom (from the root upward, changing from thick to thin, with a bamboo shoot shape) should be selected.

  Processing: Chinese privet (Ligustrum quihoui) is vigorous and very tolerant of pruning. For shaping, the method of coarse binding and fine pruning should be adopted, that is, the trunk and main branches are appropriately bent and bound, either with palm fiber or metal wire, and afterward the small branches are carefully pruned.

  Tree forms: Chinese privet (Ligustrum quihoui) has strong sprouting ability and relatively strong plasticity. It is generally made into forms such as the straight-trunk style, double-trunk style, slanting-trunk style, curved-trunk style and cascade style. Its branches and leaves can be shaped into cloud-flake or steamed-bun forms, and can also be pruned into a natural tree shape.