24 | November | 2014 | Bonsai Eejit

Today we visited the top bonsai gardens and collections in the Nagoya area on our private bus.

Daiju-en Bonsai Garden

Toro Suzuki is the third generation proprietor of Daiju-en Bonsai Garden in Okazaki, Japan. His grandfather, Saichi Suzuki, was one of the greatest pine bonsai masters of all time and is responsible for the introduction of Zuisho Japanese five-needle pine and the Princess persimmon. His father Toshinori Suzuki continued in his father’s footsteps of training masterpiece bonsai and added Needle junipers to one of his specialties. Many of the now common pine training techniques for shortening needles came from Saichi and Toshinori Suzuki. Toro Suzuki is in charge of the Nippon Taikan Bonsai Exhibition which finishes today.

Toro Suzuki continues to specialize in Japanese black pine bonsai, but also has a great number of Japanese five-needle pine and Chinese quince. Dean Harrell from Virginia is currently studing with him along…

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I had a one to one workshop on Saturday and as part of the session we carried out a little work on this Maple Raft. This is the front before we started.

End on view

Back view

and from the other end

Over the Winter and into next Spring we planned to reposition the last branch on the right of the tree. In it’s current position it stopped the flow. The branch when viewed end on, or even in the back view above, turns almost 90 degrees towards the front and brings the flow to an abrupt end. We raffia’d the branch and wired it to allow us to bring it around into a more suitable position. This was done in stages during the afternoon. We opted to use a bar to act as an anchor point to give us more control of the branch. The tree had a few other branches wired at the same time. The wire will need close monitoring in the Spring as this tree is a vigorous grower. Hopefully the wire can stay in place until the tree is defoliated in late May early June at which point it can be removed.

Some work was also carried out on a deadwood hollow in the main trunk. Some wood was rotting and in a few places deadwood was stopping the rolling in of the cambium layer. The hollow will be darken down to catch the eye less when viewing.