Leptospermum ‘Pink Cascade’

I was so disappointed in missing out on the Earth and Fire Pot Sale, cancelled due to the lockdown, that I immersed my sorrow in checking out plants at the Rockdale Community Nursery. A row of $40 Leptospermum ‘Pink Cascade’ caught my eye as some had interesting and thicker trunks. My first subject became my take home solace, the others didn’t stack up to it in hoped for potential. It had an hour to settle in unmolested and then I started working.

I removed 8cm of top dressing to get down to the nebari and a lovely trunk was revealed. How cool is that!! No, there was no reverse taper, thankfully. But it was still a wilderness of branches going hither and thither.

The completion of the first styling and this was not what I expected but it was what the tree dictated. I now have a windswept. Leggy branches will be shortened once the flowering is over. I am still correcting styling angles but the branches are stiff and uninterested in being bent so I have to do what I can and work around their immovability. When the foliage fills out, the straightness of the trunk will be outweighed by the flowering splendour.

All in all, I am very pleased and this lepto, now named ‘Solace’, and it has somewhat eased the absence of the pot sale. Somewhat. Well, hardly at all but it is still a promising bonsai.