This week has been flat out so far with bonsai learning, I can’t even remember what day it is! I say learning as opposed to styling for a reason. Yes, trees have been styled but always with a view to what is best for them in both health and future development. This isn’t a workshop were you bring a tree to be completed, this is about making better bonsai. I can’t stress enough that Peter really cares about the trees first. Benches full of material of all types but each is being progressed with a plan, not just sitting for sale.

Yesterday was mostly about deciduous trees with Portuguese Oak , Maples, Japanese Apricot, all getting some work. A little carving was in order and a lot of discussion about how to develop the best tree for the future and using different techniques to achieve this.

Below are some of the trees in various states of work. Not all my work I’ll add, Steve, my new American friend, has been hard at it too. 

We spent some time studying images of trees in books, in particular Japanese apricot, and seeing what the great ones look like. Even art work depicting the tree shows how they grow in nature. We then looked to emulate that when working the tree, always looking to the future. 

 We’ve now moved on to look at Taxus with some Yamadori trees being brought into the studio for discussion and work. Again it’s not a styling but the step by step work that needs to be done to create healthy trees with growth in the right places to create quality bonsai. Work on these continues…

In the photo Peter is looking for an older shot of the tree to show us, not browsing on Facebook 🙂 

More as I get time to share. 

My first tree completed in my week with Peter Warren. This Japanese White Pine had recovered from its time in quarantine where sadly it had lost a few branches. My task initially was to clear out any of the dead twigs and branches and then remove any strong growth in the upper portion of the tree.

That done I was given the task of wiring out the tree in a way that was sympathitic to the needs of the tree. Helping it regain vigour by opening out the branches for good light and balancing the density of the foliage between the vigorous areas and the weaker lower branches. With Peter’s guidance I learned a lot from this tree.It’s that last 10% of tweaking that makes all the difference and is probably the hardest bit to get right for me. You think it’s right and then you see a Japanese trained professional  tweak it! With some good pointers and corrections I think it turned out well.