Another tree repot, this time it’s a shohin viburnum being moved to it’s new home, a nice little Japanese Pot.
This was it last year when I picked it up. Looking forward to seeing it fill out this year.
Tag Archives: Northern Ireland
New Pots From Ian Baillie
I was lucky to have access to a great collection of Ian Baillie pots at a club event this weekend past and I got my hands on some great pots. Sunday saw me repotting a few trees. Here are the results…
A dwarf Willow with a nice heavy base. This is it’s first time in a small pot and is in the first steps of styling this year. Tree is roughly 10cm tall.
A great pot with stunning detail.
This was the old pot and tree as acquired back in June last year.
A shohin Rose
A root over rock Rose. We had fun selecting a pot for this one. It’s a touch large as it sits but should make a stunning image when it produces pink flowers this year.
This was it before and in flower last year.
And a root over rock Cotoneaster in a new shallow pot adding to the drama .
and here in the old pot last September.
Bonsai Empire’s Noelanders Video
Another great watch from Bonsai Empire.
Noelanders 2017 Flying Visit
When my friend Harry in the Netherlands kindly offered to collect me from Amsterdam airport and take me to The Noelanders Trophy on Saturday, who was I to say no 🙂 I jumped on an Easyjet flight (other airlines are available) and made my way with Harry over to Genk for all Saturday had to offer. Every year something seems to get in the way of a visit to Europe’s premier bonsai exhibition, this year I was not to be denied.
I spent my time mostly between the trade stands and the exhibition with an occasional look at the demos. At every point in between I bumped into old friends and new. Very much a social occasion as well as a bonsai event. Great to see you all, albeit only briefly in passing on my way around the venue.
I mostly honoured the no photographs rule within the exhibition, only stopping here and there to take a few general shots of crowds viewing the exhibits. I did manage to take a few random shots around the trade halls to capture the feel of the event, and a few in the demo area. There’s loads of photos of the show already doing the rounds of social media that you can view, the best being the official shots on Bonsai Empire. See the winners there.
I will of course buy the gallery book of the event when it’s produced to remember the event. However, with the amount of people openly taking close up snaps of trees at the show and exhibitors doing the same and then posting these on social media on Friday and Saturday, I don’t really see why it’s been banned! Just ask for no tripods and request those taking snaps not to publish them until after the event is finished. I really can’t see this impacting on book sales. Just my opinion of course, we all have one 😉
Anyway, here are some random shots from the event.
A big thank you to the Belgium Bonsai Association for putting on this fantastic event. Well done.
A massive thank you to Harry and Anne for their amazing hospitality this weekend.
Hawthorn Winter Wiring
This Hawthorn has been with me a while. It’s one of the finer growth species and thus not quick to flower as a bonsai. I’m spending a little time to get the placement of primary, secondary right and then build a nice canopy of ramification. The aim with this one was always a natural image of a Hawthorn commonly seen in the Irish Landscape.
Before Wiring
and after
played about with the time lapse app on my new camera and was please with the results. Check out the video.
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Berberis First Wiring
This berberis was ready for it’s first wiring. I wanted to give it a first wiring last year but it budded out before I got near it.
I wanted to make a few further decisions about trunk selection and get the basic branch structure going in the right direction. A very brittle tree to work with and covered in tiny thin thorns, painful. This was the result. Early days with this being it’s first sighting of wire but great potential going forward.
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For earlier posts on this tree see: Just acquired and Berberis Clump Repot
Seen here in 2014
Steve’s Bonsai Garden
When I was over at Suruyama Towers the other week I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Steve McKee who was visiting. Steve and I have a fair bit in common and it was good to get a walk around the trees and chat bonsai.
Steve picked up a nice Literati Scots Pine from Peter when he was there and I have been following what’s happened since on Steve’s Facebook page ” Steve’s Bonsai Garden”.
This is the Pine as bought.
Steve has since worked on the tree with Paul Finch and this is the result. More photos over on his FB page.
Steve has a fantastic collect of trees and and great garden layout.
Well worth a follow over on Facebook to see more of his trees and follow his exploits around some of the exhibition in the UK.
Here’s a link to his page again to save you a search: Steve’s Bonsai Garden
Steve’s Work
During my time with Mr Warren, Steve Salisian from LA was busy working away beside me. I thought I’d share his work here for you to see.
The first tree is a Sabina Juniper with great deadwood and movement.
Portuguese Oak
Another Portuguese Oak
A raft style Yew
Japanese Maple
Thanks for adding to my experiences for the week Steve, look forward to catching up with you in LA in May. 🙂
Sabina Juniper
Peter told me to pick something out to work on and I fancied a Juniper. With lots of great material to pick from both large and small, I opted for this Kifu sized one. I was left to figure out what options we had for the tree and if possible make it good from both sides. Most of Peter’s smaller (shohin) trees are good for either side, a great option for shohin display stands. Be nice to do the same with this one even at Kifu size. I gave the tree a preliminary clean up allowing me to study the trunk movement and branch structure a little more. Steve and I had a play around with it looking at a few possible angle changes both up and down. However what drew me to the tree in the first place was the angle it was at now. I gave my ideas to Peter just adding a possible tilt forward. I wanted to try and get two apexes on the tree but more separation was needed between the two main branches. As the lower one had shari, we opted to split the deadwood from the live vein a little to allow us to lower the branch further. A slightly risky procedure but fun. First Peter explained that before we carried out the split and bend that we should first look and see what other options we have if it goes wrong as a back up plan. There was a nice tree even if we lost the branch that was to be split.
The back..
and front…
Vein to be split from deadwood.
Making a start
Raffia applied
Wired up.
Initial bend put in place with an option to drop further if required.
Showing the amazing movement and twisting live vein.
During the wiring process
After wiring and lime sulphur was applied. Again the tree was not styled to look refined now. This is a Sabina with flower buds. As the foliage that is flowering now will die back when finished, we leave more of the fresher growth in behind to allow the foliage mass to be rebuilt later this year. There’s no point in fine wiring flowering areas when it will be removed within a year. What is important is the placement of the primary and secondary branches that will form the structure of the tree in years to come. A lesson learned from Peter all week – no point wiring what is being removed soon. An enthusiast may like to create the best image possible right now but is it good for the tree and a speedier development? No it’s not. Do what is required and move on to the next challenge. I still probably wired branches in this one that didn’t need it. A hard habit to break.
A check to see that it still falls within Kifu size.
It looks good from the other side too, but I forgot to take a photo 😦 A great tree to play with and I learnt a few things about Sabina along the way. Win Win.
Iwasaki Japanese White Pine
I posted on this last week but I wanted to revisit the tree here and get all the photos in one place. As stated, this tree was part of the Iwasaki Collection in Japan. I have pinched Peter’s text from his Facebook page explaining a little about how he came to have the trees.
Last May I took a very short trip to Japan as I was invited by Mr. Morimae of S-Cube Bonsai to have a sneak preview of the sale of the Iwasaki Collection.
As you may or may not be aware, Mr. Iwasaki was one of the premier collectors of bonsai in Japan over the last fifty years and he amassed a huge collection. He passed away several years ago and after lots of issues were resolved the collection was put up for sale and it was purchased by S-CubeDue to my long standing relationship with Mr. Morimae, he let me get into the collection before 95% of the Japanese Bonsai world, let alone anybody from outside of Japan. As a result I got to choose a number of very special trees for a number of clients as well as some for myself to sell or style them and keep until someone wanted them. Finally, they got back here after a long process of quarantine. As they are trees with history and pedigree, some of them will be for sale, some of them not. There are a couple that I want to restyle this year but most of them are suffering a little from the importation and there are a few blind buds and branches so major work will wait until next year.
What you can’t tell so easily from the photos is the depth of character in the bark, the struggle these trees have been through giving them genuine old school bonsai flavour. These aren’t average pines which have been grown quickly and made to look pretty, these have age, character and class.
There are another bunch of trees that didn’t make it into the van this time but I should have them by the end of the week, as well as some non Iwasaki collection pines.
As with most of the trees that I put up, 95% of them are for sale but not to somebody I do not trust to look after them and not until I am 100% happy with their health.
On arrival at Peter’s last week I was given the task of clearing out the dead twigs and branches on this tree. Some had been lost during quarantine perhaps due to the fact that they were over due a repot and maybe watering was difficult to get right. Peter has turned the health around and there were many strong shoots on the tree.
This is it as I started.
Here after I cleared out the majority of the dead branches. Some left for jin as required.
Peter then informed me that I would be working on this tree for the first few days. A great honour to be trusted with the work on such a tree. My first job was to go through the tree removing shoots that were too strong, mostly towards the apex and then do some bud thinning. This is it before.
And after that process.
I then worked my way up the tree wiring each branch after discussion with Peter. So many little tips were given during this process. Information on JWP, wiring, branch placement, health etc. Below is the tree as we finished the work. This was not styled to look it best now, but shaped for the health of the weaker lower branches and gaining better structure in the next 5 years. A new front was selected due to brach removal but Peter was keen to point out that it must look good from all angles and we constantly spun the tree during the whole styling process.
Final tweaks
Structure from underneath.
A happy me, tired but happy 🙂
Covetous eyes…
Check out the video clip…
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Bonsai Eejit 