Bonsai ace Mark Fields from Indiana held a day-long workshop for ACBS members. Mark spent the first part of the day styling a small juniper and explaining some of the horticultural properties that make junipers such good candidates for bonsai. He discussed tree health, especially through using a quality soil, design elements, wiring, and also showed how readily dead wood accents can be created on junipers.
Mark next worked individually with club members on their own works-in-progress trees that they brought to the event. Like some grand master chess champion playing a dozen simultaneous games, Mark moved from tree to tree, explaining to members what he his plan might be for each tress. Mark shared both his horticultural understanding of varieties as well as he sense of designing a pleasing bonsai from rough material.
Because members brought a variety of species, including ponderosa pine, black pine, juniper procumbus, larch, as well as tropical varieties, this proved to be a very informative session of the workshop. Mark discussed the growth habits of each variety, and gave detailed advice how how to get good results. Specifically, he demonstrated how to rough prune the very different foliage of each. He showed the work needed to prune black pine, as well as a tropical ficus in order to get improved growth during the coming growing season. 
