Bonsai Art

Here in the UK we don’t like to wait for long. Don’t get me wrong, we seem to love queuing up in shops for as long as it takes. It doesn’t matter to us if we wait in the post office line for half an hour as long as we get there in the end. But for some reason we hate to wait for anything else here in Britain. Thats just the British way. If you don’t notice there’s a green light at the traffic lights you just know that someone is going to beep his/her horn at you within 2 seconds.

The same can be said with our attitude towards bonsai. This ancient Japanese art form just seems too slow for todays society. We need good trees and we need them now. I’m sure it must have been a western invention to collect trees from the wild which are ‘already done’. The idea of growing a fantastic old bonsai from seed is a great idea… Until you realise how long it’s going to take.

Some bright spark one day decided that it might be pretty great if you could just cut a tree down to a stump and let it grow from that size on. It’s a great idea and sometimes does work quite well, but you are still faced with quite a few problems when it comes to an instant bonsai from a stump.

For a start it still takes a large amount of time. First of all if it survives the mass of roots you chop off, you need to place it in a growing bed and not a pot to recover. You then have to cut it down to the required size and then wait for a few years for it to grow branches again. After that you need to carve a considerable amount of wood out of it to make it look half sensible.

If all the above goes well after 5 years or so it might be looking half reasonable.

All of these reasons are why I hate stumps and think they should be left growing where they are into full size trees. It’s fair enough if you find a small tree which has been stunted by nature and can be trained easily. So let’s stick with sensible and natural looking yamadori and leave the stumps well alone! If you think you have to chop off some major parts leaving it looking a bit silly, leave it growing where it is.

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This weekend I acquired a very odd looking tree which I have named the creature from the deep! It was growing in the side of a very steep slope of loose coal which we call slag heaps. The main trunk had been snapped by someone who was probably sliding/falling down it and used it to stop themselves. Apart from that it was in a bit of a rough way because the roots we being worked loose by the sliding rocks it was growing in.

So I brought it back and planted it in my growing bed to check it out further. It has got to be one of the strangest looking things I have ever had. To me it looks like a creature rising up from out of the sea in an angry mood, possibly because someone has disturbed it’s slumber… My brother just laughed at me when I told him this however.

I’m trying to decide now what direction to take it in. It has lots of exposed roots, some of which are hidden in the photos as I wanted to make sure it was comfortable.

I’ll be leaving it in this bed for a year and doing a bit of styling where it is before committing it to a pot

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I’ve tried a lot of different ways to collect trees and keep them alive while doing so. Here is the only way I’ve found that makes sure they survive:

You will need - a plastic bag, a bin bag, a cable tie, a shovel, a branch cutter

1. Dig up the tree at the location trimming the roots and branches to your desired size. It’s important to do this roughly now as it can’t be changed afterwards.

2. Get a plastic bag and put water in it.

3. Swill the water around the bag and tip out the excess water.

4. Wrap the plastic bag around the roots and secure the bag on with a cable tie.

5. Place the whole tree in a bin bag.

6. Take home and plant directly in the ground.

7.* Leave the tree in the ground for a year before planting in a pot.

*You can skip this part and plant in a pot if you do not have to prune too many roots from the tree and it has lots of healthy fibrous roots.

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Last week I wrote about the newest addition to my collection. A very large yamadori hawthorn. It was cut down to it’s bare bones and transferred to my garden. Yesterday I found a pot for it while out at the shops.

I inspected the roots and found them to be in good condition so went ahead and potted it up. It was quite an effort as it is such a big lump of a tree and I was doing it alone too. It has got a lot of room to grow in this new pot so it should be fine for a good few years.

As expected, the nebari is fantastic now that it is on show in the pot, it’s huge!

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Going today from the biggest tree - (Yamadori Hawthorn) to the smallest.

I have created a new mame bonsai this week. It is a type of willow and it actually quite old for it’s size. It’s between 5-10 years old and is very short indeed. It is under the 10cm requirement for mame but I haven’t measured it exactly because it’s going to grow a bit this spring and move up to shohin status. I found it about this size, all I’ve done is trim it a bit.

It’s very cute looking I think…

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