Mar 15 2013

That Pot

The pot that I swapped with Stephen a week ago has now found a new tenant. I really wanted to get a tree into it this year just so I could look at the pot on the benches 🙂 I survey of trees brought me to this root over rock Cotoneaster. It’s current matt brown pot isn’t lifting the tree in any way. I wanted something that would help show off the flowers, berries and amazing Autumn colour. This pot might not be ideal, but it close for me. The size was just slightly larger than the old pot and I was able to lean the tree slightly to the right to make the image more dynamic and bring the heavy root to the left more into play.

This was it in the Autumn, so you can see why I wanted to lift the colour of the pot to compliment the foliage.

and before potting

and after in the new pot at a new angle.

Mar 9 2013

Twin Trunk Scottie Repot

It was time to repot my Scot’s Pine from my Ryan Neil workshop. I needed to get it into something better than the plastic container that had been substituted after the tree blew off the bench a while back and smashed a rather nice Iain Baillie pot 😦 I had looked for a pot while at Willowbog but there wasn’t a pot that met all the needs. I opted to buy a temporary pot that would do for the next few years and allow me to look around for the right final pot.

The observant of you will notice that the tree still needs to tilt slightly further to the right. I need to make a further slight adjustment but this is mostly down to the wrong angle from which I took the photo!

Mar 1 2013

Four Go Collecting

This morning Phil, Stephen, Ben and I go collecting Hawthorn, we hope! It’s a new site, and we hope the quality is good but we still have to get permission. We have a good track record with permission getting so fingers crossed for tomorrow. We do have a plan ‘B’ just in case. No, it’s not just steal them!! We have another site nearby. This is the field we hope to be wandering around at about 10am 🙂

Feb 20 2013

Fuji Cherry

My Fuji Cherry is on the verge of flowering.

Feb 18 2013

I Love this time of year

I really do love this time of year. Watching trees waking up and starting to push their new leaves.

Japanese Maple

Trident Maple

Japanese Larch

Jan 24 2013

Tree for the Weekend

This is the Scots Pine that I’ll be doing in the workshop with Ryan Neil next Sunday.

I did some prep and removed some of the older needles for wiring.

After needle removal

Even remembered to cover up to catch the needles 🙂

Jan 22 2013

Old Joe Yew Update

Time to rework this Yew called Old Joe after my Uncle. See HERE and HERE for background and older photos.

This is it now. Grown well in the last while. Decisions to be made about the future height of the tree. Initially keep tall for a bit of carving practice on a poor tree. Now as it fills out I might be tempted to create the tree from the bottom few branches. However, tall and straight is part of my memory of my uncle, decisions decisions.

Jan 17 2013

Shohin Japanese Maple

I did a little thinning out of unwanted buds on this maple. I also wanted to remove the moss that was mostly growing on the tree and hiding the nebari. I also noticed a new root emerging from the moss, it’s on the move already.

root emerging

Trunk and nebari hidden

Afterwards with moss removed

Nebari uncovered

Jan 16 2013

Purple Beech

This is a pretty raw Purple beech that was field grown. I cut back some of the unwanted growth and did a little wiring to direct branches into the right areas. long term project but great colour in leaf and brightens up a bench.

After

Jan 2 2013

Cork bark Forest Update

Took a few snaps of the forest while we were sizing it up for a Spring repot onto a slab. Paul B and Bob B should recognise the slab 🙂 A few adjustments to be made before we make the move.