Apr 17 2012

Bonsai Art of Japan Episode 25

As we have come to expect, here is another excellent video in the series, this one concentrates on the pruning of Japanese Maples.

Apr 17 2012

Worth having a look around this Nursery in Korea, some fantastic Hornbeams.

Nichigo Bonsai

This is the final post about the Korean Bunjae Museum in Seoul (Part 1)(Part 2). The following photos are from the largest green house on the site which was mainly filled with the trees belonging to the owner of the Nursery.

There were literally thousands and thousands of bonsai inside the huge green house.

All the trees were sheltering out the winter under cover due to the low temperatures the area experiences. As a result the green house was quite cramped, In a strange way this was quite good as you really had to hunt around to look at all the tree.

Throughout the collection there were many trees that were a little unusual. Some of these unusual characteristics were due to the fact that they were collected trees and others were grown in ways I was un familiar with.

One such tree was this exposed root forest…

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Apr 17 2012

More Accents

I’ve been splitting and potting up more accents. I wanted to make use of a few pots I got at the BSA exhibition.

This is a Lichen with red flowering trumpets in a Suteki pot.

Some Japanese Horsetail, also suteki pot.

and another suteki pot with an unknown plant, answers on a post card please 🙂

All still to mature but I’ll keep you posted.

Apr 16 2012

Yamadori Pine Collecting Video

I managed to take a few video clips during our bog hopping exploits last week. I’ve thrown them together for my pleasure and hopefully yours 🙂

Apr 16 2012

Malus in Flower

Malus just reaching it’s peak of flowering.

Apr 15 2012

Accents

I caught up with an old friend this week. Robert Porch is in N Ireland seeing family and called with me. Robert taught me a lot about bonsai and is probably one of the most understated, under estimated bonsai artists in the UK.

He brought a selection of accent plants with him and we managed to do a few swaps.

Some of the trays of accents available.

I got my hands on a dwarf Astilbe.

Snowbell

Hosta, he had about 7 varieties with him!

Dwarf grasses

Apr 14 2012

Potting Up

Yesterday saw us potting up the remaining Scots Pine and getting them into the poly tunnels. As usual I had the camera in hand. Some would say that this is a cunning ploy for me to avoid the heavy lifting, that is not the case but is a rather handy bonus 🙂

Phil considering binning this one!!

Phew, he’s only removing some of the grass from the root ball.

We managed to find a few interesting heathers as well.

and some rather nice lichen with red flowering trumpets.

The watering area before placing into the tunnels

Smudge doesn’t care about the Pines’ ‘Just throw the Ball Phil!!’

More watering

Important to keep watering until the water runs clear. The grit is dusty and all the fine particles need to be washed out of the bottom.

The Old Tunnel

and the new tunnel

the rest went to Phil’s place to go on his heat bed for a month or so. These were the trees with poorer root systems.

This was our last collecting trip this Spring. If all goes well we are looking at further collecting in the Autumn.

Apr 13 2012

Boggy Scotties

Here some photos from our collecting trip today, well, actually it’s now yesterday. To knackered to type much about it. I’ll let the photos do the talking were I can.

You can see that these Scots Pines have been lifted from a bog. They are self seeded and when asking for permission to collect the farmer told me that they are all scheduled for destruction as they shouldn’t be there. We are happy to try and save them 🙂

First one of the day.