“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”― Linus Van Pelt
I bought this little tree for $6, specifically to make it into my own little Charlie Brown Christmas tree. But after the new year, I'm going to bonsai the hell out of it and see how it looks.
Merry Christmas to all!
And to all a good night.
“Spending time outdoors makes you feel great.”― Elizabeth Hurley
Especially if you are a juniper. I saw this today in the Burgess Seed & Plant Company's catalog.
Do not believe a word of this! I may still be a dilettante, but on this point, I am not uncertain. Never try to grow Junipers indoors. Oh, they might seem like they are doing well for a while, but this is trickery. Like the firs you buy as Christmas trees, Junipers will continue to display healthy-looking foliage for weeks, if not months, after they have actually died. They need sunlight, fresh air and, in winter, cold weather to trigger dormancy, or they will die prematurely. Just because a vendor or a website tells you that Junipers are "indoor" plants doesn't mean thatJunipers are indoor plants. Do not trust any vendor, author or website claiming that Junipers can be grown successfully indoors. The only feature you will develop successfully on your "Indoor Juniper" is the deadwood. Lots of it. Nothing but it. You have been warned...
“You can't get too much winter in the winter.”― Robert Frost
This is what winter looks like in my part of the world. It's not exactly a Christmas card, but it does have one cool thing about it. The trees drop their leaves and expose their structure for us to observe. Like at this show I'm going to check out next month.
Deciduous bonsai have traditionally been exhibited with full foliage, but a growing trend is to display them in winter, when their "bones" are showing. Here in Southern California, the place to see that is the Winter Silhouettes Show at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, located at 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia CA 91007.
This year, the Winter Silhouettes Show will be held on January 18 & 19, from 10 am - 4:30 pm. There will be demonstrations each day, and a dinner on Saturday at 5:30 pm. One of the clubs I'm in, Kofu Bonsai Kai, has been asked to contribute to the Saturday evening’s entertainment by competing in a tree styling contest. The dilettante has not be invited to participate, which is probably for the best. For some discussion and photos from a past Winter Silhouettes show, check out this thread from BonsaiNut.
“No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable.” ― John Steinbeck
Photo, Metasequoia glyptostrobides as bonsai, by D. Ramey Logan
There are three species of sequoia, and all of them can be trained as bonsai. They have their advantages and drawbacks, but the most interesting of them might be the Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostrobides), which is an uncommon deciduous conifer with flat needle-like foliage that turns yellow and then bronze before falling off as winter approaches. The Dawn Redwood is a living Mesozoic Era fossil, thought to be long extinct until it was discovered living in groves in China in the 1940s. Its fossil record goes back hundreds of millions of years. Dinosaurs dined on these trees in the Cretaceous, Jurassic and probably the Triassic Periods, 66 to 252 million years ago. It is considered a critically endangered species, but it is becoming more common due to the popularly of the tree as a decorative park or garden specimen.
In nature, these trees grow in excess of 100 feet tall, with thick bases and very straight reddish trunks. They can grow 7 feet or more in a single year. As potted specimens, they require protection in freezing temperatures, and struggle when temperatures spike aboive 100ºF. They grow best in full sun, but should be moved to partial shade during peak summer heat spells. Given ample sunlight and a southern exposure, they can thrive indoors, as well. They prefer moist, well-draining soil. They do not thrive in extremely shallow pots, and if they dry out, they die out. Don't let the leaves dry out, ever, or you will need to replace your whole tree. Fortunately, they are not prone to damage from insects or other pests.
As bonsai, feed them well after the new leaves appear and you will see vigorous growth in every part of the tree, including the roots. The require frequent root pruning. Annual repotting is not unheard of. Getting strong nebari can be difficult, as the tree does not naturally produce surface roots, but techniques like planting the tree over a piece of tile can assist in the development of nebari. The tops have to be allowed to grow out and then cut back regularly. This is one of the fastest growing species of tree you can have in your collection. The apex and branches will all grow quickly, and there will be constant back budding, which makes it possible to remove branches without worrying about whether a replacement can be developed. Shaping with wire during the growing season can be challenging, so the best wiring shaping is done during the late fall and winter. For additional tips, check out Jeff Howe's LittleBigTrees blog.
I'm ordering about half a dozen of these to help keep the species going. If they do well, I'm sure I'll have some more posts about Dawn Redwoods in the future.
"I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow." ― David Hobson
There are many ways to acquire material, but the most common way is to start with a trip to the nursery, especially if, like me, you take the greatest pleasure out of developing your bonsai, rather than just having them. Some people prefer to buy a finished bonsai or a pre-bonsai from a bonsai nursery, and that's great; but this post isn't directed to those folks. The principles aren't a lot different, but this post is about how I go about selecting raw stock from a regular nursery.
Picking Your Species. Some people will teach you that the first thing to look for is the species. But I find that advice to be a two-edged sword. It's true that some species are not suitable for bonsai. In general, however, any species that can grow a woody trunk and will survive in a pot has at least some potential for bonsai. If the leaves are small, or you can reduce them, it is better but some trees with fairly large leaves - like grape or sugar maple - have made very good bonsai. If you are a beginner, it is easiest to pick a species that is more commonly used for bonsai, like junipers or Chinese elms, simply because it is easier to get information about the care and maintenance of these trees than, say, a Fukien Tea. But you shouldn't always go to the nursery looking only for a specific kind of tree, because then you'll be tempted to simply buy the best specimen of that kind, whether or not it has good potential for bonsai. Instead, remain flexible and opportunistic. Recently, I went to a nursery looking for some Japanese Maples or Foemina Junipers, and instead left with a cheap boxwood with great nebari, a honeysuckle with very strong trunk movement and taper, and a pyracantha with nice nebari and good lower branches for cutting down to shohin size. The maples had no taper and the junipers in the size I was looking for all had very poor nebari or had other major problems, so I bought none of those.
If you live in a very cold climate, avoid tropical species unless you plan to bring them in during the winter. There are some plants, for example, that are perennials in zones 9-11, but annuals in zones 8 and below. If you are in zone 6 and you plan to keep your trees outside year round, forget those species that are going to die when the temperatures drop into the 30s. If you live in a very hot climate, consider avoiding species that need a couple of heavy frosts in the winter to stay vigorous year round. If you are a novice and don't have a lot of time to spend on your trees, avoid species that require a lot of properly timed attention, like black pine, which needs to be decandled at certain times and needs to have needles thinned at certain times, or wisteria, which needs two well-times prunings if you want them to flower.
Examine the Tree's Health. Some lists of things to look for in a nursery plant will start off with the advice to look for a healthy tree. It is true that you want a healthy tree, but that's not the first thing you look for. Most of the trees you are looking at will be fairly healthy. That's just a given. But you start narrowing your choices down using the criteria below first, then you make sure your tree is going to survive the trip home. Check for strong roots. Check for pest infestations. While you might be able to spray for some infestations, others can be more problematic. You don't want to buy a pine that is infested with beetles. You don't want to put a 15 gallon pot with an ant colony in your back seat. On the other hand, sometimes, you can get really good bargains on trees that look a bit off because some branches got snapped, or the foliage isn't vigorous. Pay for roots, but don't pay for foliage. You can always build the foliage later, and you're going to cut most of the existing foliage off in the next 24 months anyhow. Find a tree with strong roots, a healthy trunk and some movement and build the top of the tree later. Often, you can get that tree home, give it proper soil, proper watering and some good fertilizer and it will start looking like it's on steroids.
Decide on a Budget. Don't start out with very expensive material. If you still don't know what you're doing, and you kill a pre-bonsai black pine that you spent $125 on, you'll feel a lot more discouraged than you will if you take that same money and buy 6 large nana junipers and you kill two of them.
Evaluate the Potential of as Bonsai. Once you've decided roughly what kinds of trees you want, and you get to the nursery and look over some healthy looking specimens, how do you choose the best trees for you in your price range? By evaluating the trunks, the roots and the lower branches.
1. Trunks. I always start with the trunk(s). Look for three things: thickness, taper and movement.
Trunks will thicken over time, especially if you are willing to plant your tree in the ground for a few years rather than in a pot, but if you start with a thick trunk in the lowest 6-12" of the tree, you'll have a huge head start. The heart and soul of most bonsai you will grow from nursery stock will be in the lower 12 inches. Sometimes the lowest 4-6". Everything else, you can grow out and build, but your lower trunk is something you're going to be stuck with 90% of the time.
How is the taper? If you see reverse taper, leave the tree for some other buyer. If you have strong taper, especially near the bottom, you have a better tree. Not every tree in a nursery pot will have spectacular taper, but some will, and those are more desirable. Others can have taper developed later. See how the trunk separates from branches are you move up the tree. Do you see places where you could cut the trunk back and develop a new apex? If not, it'll take much longer to create the desired taper.
How is the trunk movement? If you have very interesting movement in the lower 12 inches, you might have a very good tree. If there are problems with the movement in the lower 12 inches, like a pigeon-breasted trunk at the first bend, this is going to be very hard to correct with pruning and wiring. Move on to the next pot.
You can't see the trunk in this photo, but this was a nice 5 gallon nana procumbens juniper with a good single trunk and a lot of very interesting movement.
2. Roots. Next, examine the roots. There are two things you are looking for - the health of the root ball and the appearance of the surface roots. In the boxwood in my photo above, I liked the trunk's thickness and opportunities to create taper, but I loved the nebari. That's why I bought it. Nebari - the exposed surface roots of the tree at the soil line - takes a long time to develop. It's much easier to spend a couple of hours at a couple of different nurseries examining the nebari than it is to spend five years using advanced techniques to encourage nebari growth. You are looking for roots that will be exposed around the tree at the same level, in all directions, moving away from the trunk and getting thinner as they get farther from the trunk. Roots that loop around the trunk, or come up and out of the soil and then dive back in like a sea serpent are not desirable and sometimes cannot be corrected without endangering the health of the tree. Don't be afraid to dig a little around the base of the trunk. Often, the nebari will be buried underneath an inch or more of soil. Pull that soil away and see how the trunkline will look when you lower the soil level to the point where the nebari flare away from the base of the tree. Sometimes, what looks like a boring tree can actually be very attractive when you remove the excess layers of soil.
Also make sure that the tree has a healthy root ball. If you have a root-bound plant, and you are six months away from a safe repotting time, consider taking a pass. That tree might die before you can get it into good soil. If the roots are soggy or smell bad, consider taking a pass. If the roots are strong on one side, and weak on the other - especially when paired with weak foliage on one side - consider taking a pass.
I loved the based of this Olive, especially after removing some of the surface soil around the base.
3. Branching. Look at the basic shape of the lower part of the tree. If you have a nice trunk and healthy roots with some nebari, start looking at your lower branches. Does the tree have an obvious front? If so, how do the first, second and third branches set up? Ideally, the first branch should be about a third of the way from the roots to the apex (if you appreciate fibonacci sequences in nature, that branch should be about 5/13ths of the way up). If the first strong branch (after any initial pruning you might do) is way too low, or way too high, it might be a poor candidate. If the first branches are thin and weak, can you grow them out and just remove larger branches above? If the branches are totally unsuitable, is it a species that buds back easily? If so, you can build the branch structure later, much more easily than you can thicken a trunk, create movement or develop nebari. If it is a species that does not do much back-budding on old wood (pines and other conifer, especially), the first and second branches are much more important.
This pomegranate has some nebari, and some movement on one of the trunks, but it had a weird belt-like indentation in the lower trunk, and I hated the branching, so I skipped it.
If you've found a good species, in decent health, in your price range, and it has a nicely tapered trunk with some movement, some root flare, a well placed lower branch, a decent branch higher and on the opposite side, and a halfway decent branch above that in the back, you've saved yourself a whole lot of time, work and material. Now get to work building your bonsai.
"The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden." ― St. Thomas More
The GSBF Bonsai Garden will celebrate its 15th Birthday next year. If you've never been, and you live in or visit the Bay Area, it's worth a look. I haven't been in more than 8 years, but I'm hoping to get back soon. The GSBF Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt is located near the Lakeside Garden Center, at 666 Bellevue Ave, Oakland, CA. The Garden may be closed on heavy rain days, but otherwise, the normal hours are:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Open 2nd and 4th Tuesday only, 11am - 3pm
Wednesday through Friday: Open 11am - 3pm
Saturday: Open 10am - 4pm
Sunday: Open noon - 4pm
For updates, email them at bonsailakemerritt@gmail.com or call (510) 763-8409.
Upcoming events include:
Annual Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt Mammoth Fundraiser
Saturday, February 22, 2014 - Auction
Sunday, February 23, 2014 - Sales and demonstrations
Demonstrations by Kathy Shaner and Bjorn Bjornholm.
Here are a few photos I took during my 2005 visit to the garden:
And I'm told the garden is much better now than it was in 2005.
Here's a short video about the garden.
Enjoy.
"You draw it, you carve it out. Later you build it up from a flat surface. There is no other way to do a sculpture - you either add or you subtract." ― Urs Fischer
Boxwoods have an inclination toward ramifying in sets of three or four branches, and on a lot of my collected older material, this has resulted in massive reverse taper in the trunk at the first set of branches. I've asked how others would try to fix this, and the consensus seems to be to toss the tree, or put it back into a garden to use as a hedge. It'll never work.
Challenge accepted.
So I took one of my recent acquisitions that had really bad reverse taper just a couple of inches up the trunk and decided to see if I could carve my way out of the problem. Here's what the tree looked like before I started working on it.
I decided to prune off everything to the left.
Which left it looking something like this:
Now I'll carve it out and/or turn it to make something else the front. I'm not sure about this angle, as it turns the smaller branch into the new trunk, leaving a much thicker side branch. But I could remove and jin the larger trunk and develop just the smaller trunk as my new tree.
Carving is next. This is my first effort at carving. It's not perfect. In fact, it looks like a halved peach, which is not the look I was going for. I think I'm going to buy a few more bits for my Dremel and revisit this one, but for now, this is what my trunk now looks like.
Unfinished, but improved. The reverse taper is gone and there are several possibilities for future development. I could keep this as the front, maintain the current angle and make the smaller branch my apex, removing the main trunkline and leaving some jagged jin in its place. I could remove the smaller trunk, turn it 90 degrees and make a windswept design. I could repot it and change the angle so that the thicker trunk is my apex, and pull down the branch on the right to form a more traditional informal upright tree.
Or maybe I'll do something completely different. Regardless, I'm glad I didn't toss it or put it in the ground to use as a hedge.
"Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young." ― Augustus
Harry Hirao, the founding master of Kofu Bonsai Kai, the first bonsai club I joined, is featured in a one and a half page cover story in the OC Register's Home & Garden section called "Leaves to be Desired a Lot". If you don't have a subscription to the OC Register, you can only read the first paragraph, the informational box (including a link to Kofu Kai's redesigned website) and the Orange County Bonsai Society's website. You can also see the gallery of 7 photos.
Although I know Harry Hirao from my club activity, and have been on two of his famous California juniper digs to Jawbone Canyon, I did learn a few things about the 96-year-old bonsai master, such as the fact that he just retired two years ago. I hope I'm still solid enough to work (by choice) when I'm 94 years old! I also found out that his grandfather and great-grandfather were also bonsai masters.
My favorite line about Mr. California Juniper: "Hirao is famous in bonsai circles, yet those who know him best call him a mountain goat." So true. Once you get him in the hills above Jawbone Canyon, he's like Yoda, the wise old master who can move like a much younger man when it is important. You have to see it to believe it. I also found out where our sensei collects many of his viewing stones - the Eel River in Northern California. I'm not as interested in suiseki, but I might try checking out the south fork of the Eel River the next time I'm in Mendocino County.
While a subscripton to the Register is required for viewing the entire article, sometimes the paper allows other sites to republish their articles in forums that do not require a subscription. If I find one, I will put the link in a later post.
"For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear. "― Lord Byron
Big Dave Rochester, the president of the San Diego Bonsai Society who passed away last June, left behind a lot for which to shed a tear. I never met him in person, though I've read some of his writings and we had mutual friends. He was a family man who had many friends. He also was a talented bonsai artist who had a strong collection of trees and accessories. His family has already had one giant sale of some of his trees, tools and pots, but a lot went unsold in that July sale. So now, a week from tomorrow, there will be one final chance for people to purchase from the late Dave's collection. We received this last week:
Dear Bonsai friends,
The children of the late SDBC president David Rochester invite you to the final sale of Big Dave’s Bonsai collection. Big Dave left a legacy of love for the craft of Bonsai. Included in that legacy is a large collection of both finished and nursery bonsai. All proceeds from the sale go to support his wife, Bonny Rochester.
Where: 2016 Sakina St. El Cajon, CA 92019
When: Saturday Dec 14th from 9am – 3pm
For Sale – At Discount Prices
· Fine finished Bonsai trees
· Bonsai stock
· Bonsai accessories
*Refreshments will be provided
Big Dave’s trees have been on exhibit at the San Diego County Fair, Japanese Friendship Garden, and (coming soon) the Huntington Library Bonsai Exhibit. Many of those same trees formerly on display will be for sale.
This is the final sale for Big Dave’s collection.
Cordially,
Jacob, Benjamin, Amy, & Jessica Rochester
“I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.”― Jeffrey McDaniel
Winter arrives this month. Even here in Zone 10, almost everything is dormant - even the evergreens are nearly completely dormant. Frankly, it's a little sad. We don't get snow or any of the joys of winter here in the flatlands of Southern California. It's just colder, darker much earlier and sometimes rainier. My bonsai care is almost exclusively limited to weekends, since I come home from work in the dark this month and next. Most of the clubs won't have regular meetings this month, although a couple of them have winter banquets that are a lot of fun, are well attended, and feature some pretty good raffles. And although it's a bummer to come home from work in the cold and dark, unable to do much with my trees, by the end of the month, the days will slowly start getting longer.
Here are some of the things I can or will do this month as we move into winter:
Are my trees all doing better now than at the beginning of the year? Almost all of them are. I have a computer folder of tree photos entitled RIP, so I'll spend a little time thinking about those trees, why I lost them, and how to reduce the risk of losing others in the future. This year, fortunately, I only lost a handful of trees, and with one exception, all were collected trees that I was trying to save from the trash pile.
As the year winds down, I also reflect on that adage I mentioned in my first post. There are 20 year guys, and there are first year guys who have done their first year 20 times. Have I advanced beyond first year guy status this year? Did I have a year of actual growth as a bonsai artist? I think I have. 2014 will be my third year back in the bonsai art, and I don't feel like a first year artist anymore.
"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees." ― George Eliot
And it never rains bonsai, but many common garden shrubs that can be trained as bonsai can be propagated easily by taking softwood cuttings in summer or hardwood cuttings in fall or early winter. The ones listed below tend to root quickly and grow into healthy pre-bonsai material in a relatively short period of time:
The ones with an asterisk are species that I was able to propagate from cuttings this year. Free bonsai material. It doesn't get much easier than that.
"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters." ― Paul Gauguin
Bonsai Empire has assembled an interesting collection of bio pages of bonsai masters, including some who have passed on, from various parts of the world. Here's the link to the page on North American masters, who it calls "the most important Bonsai artists (or Bonsai masters, professional Bonsai growers, as you like) from the North America region." Here's who made the list, apparently in alphabetical order, by first name:
It's a good list, filled with talented people, but so many very significant artists didn't the cut. I'm not going to rattle off all of the names I think deserve to be in the list, in part because I don't feel qualified to assemble such a list and in part because I don't want to insult anyone by leaving them off a list that purports to include all of the best.
But I've seen demos in the last couple of months by people who most certainly belong on any list of this sort. Guys like Ben Oki,
and Harry Hirao
How do you make a list of "most important" bonsai artists from North America and not include guys like that?
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” ― Mitch Albom
Noted painter, bonsai artist and author Peter Adams died on Sunday, as reported by his wife Kate on their Facebook page.
I am so sorry to report that Peter died suddenly, but peacefully, in his sleep last Sunday, November 24. It was very unexpected, we had just enjoyed a marvellous visit together on Saturday and he drew a sketch of me as I sat there. His death has been so very hard to accept, especially since we planned to leave for home together next Monday, December 2. There will be a memorial at a later date. Details will be advised on this page. His ashes will come home with me soon. I miss him so very terribly.
Kate
I never met him, but I've seen some of his work, including this workshop that was posted to YouTube earlier this year.
You can read his eulogy here. I'm sure he will be sorely missed by those he loved and those he met. It is unfortunate that his knowledge, love and enthusiasm for bonsai is no longer available to us all. Let's be thankful that it once was and appreciate what that did for everyone his life touched.
“People forget how fast you did a job – but they remember how well you did it” ― Howard Newton
So last week, I talked about the growing trend toward instant bonsai, and said it's not necessarily a terrible thing. Take a look at this one year progression on a juniper styled by Suthin Sukosolvisit, one of the masters I met in the GSBF Convention's "Sessions with the Masters" earlier this month. Here's the before photo - a challenging but healthy juniper with a nice thick trunk.
If I got this tree, I'd spend a long time staring at it to try to figure out what to do, then I'd conclude that the tree needed a long, long time to grow out and thicken those lower branches; I'd pick one of the upper branches to choose as an apex, removing or jinning the others. And I'd fret about how to deal with the fact that there are no decent lower branches on the left. Maybe I could make this a windswept design, or grow it into a very large bonsai over the next several years, getting rid of the branches on the bottom right so that I could make that left branch my number two branch and use as my primary branch the one on the right just below the split in the trunk. Good plans?
Yeah, that's not where Suthin Sukosolvisit took the tree.
He removed or jinned everything but the lower right, wired some wicked curves into it, and a year later, it looks like it's been in training for ages.
On a completely unrelated note, this is my first Wednesday post. I only post on weekends, and this week, the weekend is underway on Wednesday night. T.G.I. Wednesday!
Here's wishing all three of my readers a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.
“You're only old when you think you're old.” ― Elizabeth Langdon
This massive ficus bonsai at the Crespi Bonsai Museum doesn't know it, but it is thought to be the oldest bonsai tree in the world. An estimated 1,000 years old. Incredible, isn't it?
It is displayed in a glass pagoda with other tropical/subtropical specimens. It is an ōgata-bonsai, 310 cm tall and 280 cm wide. It purchased and shipped to Italy in 1986 by Luigi Crespi, who exhibited the tree at the Euroflora Fair in Genova. It received the fair's prestigious “Honour Prize”, given by a jury of international experts. The tree has been styled by many generations of Chinese masters, then by Japanese master Shotaro Kawahara. It is now cared for by Luigi Crespi and Alberto Lavazza.
This millenary Ficus retusa Linn is the main tree on display, although there are many others at the museum - trees styled by Japanese masters as Kato, Kawamoto, Kawahara and Ogasawara, including a rare Acer palmatum kashima, a very old Juniperus chinensis, a pinus pentaphylla (var. miyajima), and a taxus cuspidata by Mount Ishizuchi. The grounds include an impressive Japanese garden with koi ponds, viewing stones and stone lanterns.
If you ever get to the Milan area, you can see it for yourself. The Crespi Bonsai Museum is located at Milano, MI, Lombardia, [Nord], Corso Sempione, 35, 20015 S. Lorenzo di Parabiago (Mi).
Hours:
Monday 2.30 - 7.00 p.m
Tuesday to Saturday 9.00-12.30, 2.30-7.00 p.m.
Sunday 9.30-12.30
Admission: 4,00 €
You can see some more of this museum by checking out this blog post by Kath Hughes. If you get to Italy and have a chance to see it, say Saluti for me.
“We read to know that we are not alone.” ― William Nicholson
Last weekend, I posted a trip report on my April 2013 trip to collect California junipers from the Mojave Desert. At the Golden State Bonsai Federation Convention, a small group of participants were able to do a group dig through the convention, to the same general area, also led by Harry Hirao. Ron Anderson did a trip report for his website, ronandersonbonsai. Here's the link: GSBF convention dig with Harry Hirao October 2013.
Ron Anderson's blog is pretty good. He doesn't post three times a week like I do, but when he does, it's pretty good stuff. Technically, his trip report wasn't part of his blog - it is on the website under "events", but check out the blog entries. They are worthwhile.
“Change is the law of life.” ― John F. Kennedy
When I first became interested in bonsai a couple of decades ago, one of the things that was impressed upon every new bonsaiist was the concept of delayed gratification. Many of the trees we admired most were 20, 30 even 40 years old, grown from seed, styled by one owner, and lacking in any significant scars or cuts that were not specifically intended to be part of the design, such as jin, shari or carved features. This tree, for example, clearly spent many years in development:
Conceptually, trunk chops were acceptable - in fact, I first learned how to do a trunk chop from John Naka's Bonsai Techniques - but they weren't as prevalent as today. I recall a demonstration I observed in the early 1990s in which the presentation of a trunk chop to build a broom style elm or maple was prefaced with the caution that this technique "isn't for the faint of heart."
Today, the concept of the "instant bonsai" or "almost instant bonsai" is widely accepted and aggressively pursued, whereas I recall it being almost taboo two decades ago. I don't know when this change happened, and I don't know whether it was gradual or rapid, but it is profound.
Some stuff I see often today that I almost never saw in the 1990s:
I thought that perhaps this might be a local thing, but with YouTube and Internet forums, it's now easy to see what others are doing across the U.S. and across the world. I regularly read about what people are doing today in Australia, the U.K., Italy, the Philippines and Japan, among other places. This seems to be a worldwide phenomenon.
I recall the old bonsai masters telling me that to develop a nice thick trunk with good taper, you needed to have the patience to wait 15 to 20 years. Once you had a good trunk and basic style, you spent five or ten years developing just the right apex. You didn't need to start with great or expensive material. Seedlings or even seeds were sufficient to start a great bonsai, but you started down that path like the proverbial journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step. Now, people want to start the journey of a thousand miles by hitting an onramp at mile 700, or 900, or 999. Even the older guys are showing me how to take a 14' tall tree and chop it down to 8" to build that 20-year-old looking tree in three to five years. It'll have a massive scar, of course, but you can build around it to hide it, or you can make that the definitive "back" of the tree.
I'm not at all certain that this is a bad thing. It's just different. I see both benefits and drawbacks. The biggest benefit is that it often works. I think that any technique that builds a healthy and attractive tree is good. Moreover, I think it's cool that I can rejoin the hobby and have something worth showing in a couple of years, and that I won't have to wait until I'm dying of old age to have trees that I can feel proud of.
Granted, I don't like all of it. For example, this video by the Bonsai Hunters made me scratch my head a bit and wonder why someone would think it's a good idea to butcher a redwood like that (though I don't mind doing something similar to a boxwood). It can't possibly be developing into anything attractive, can it? And good grief, look at this horrible thing that a self-proclaimed bonsai expert demonstrated in a YouTube video:
Okay, that's actually an unfair example. This isn't just a bad trunk chop, it is a bad trunk chop with "jin" that makes it look like a phallus. A bonsai should not look like a phallus and most people understand that. But the popularity of the trunk chop does actually lead some people to think that this is a good idea. And those people make videos and get other people to think it's a good idea, too.
On the other hand, the fact that people are trying different styles, using different techniques and using different species rather than mostly just the old Japanese ways and Japanese species is interesting to me. The fact that some very talented artists are in their 20s, or have been in bonsai for ten years or less is interesting to me. It not only increases the innovation and artistry of bonsai, it gives me hope for my own development in this art.
The thing I like least about this change, however, is the attitude that many instructors (mine not among them) have developed about their students' raw materials. I heard of one teacher who insists that the students spend a minimum of $3,000 a year on raw material. I read an article in a bonsai magazine in which someone scolded people who take lessons without buying expensive material, using words like "I'm sorry if you think this sounds harsh" and then mocking the students who want to spend their first year working on one gallon nursery stock, as if they are insulting their instructor for having the audacity to want to learn how to build a tree from scratch.
Whatever happened to starting with very raw stock and working on techniques to build that stock over the course of many years? It's not for everyone, I know, but it should not be "not for anyone." I, for one, want my learning to include everything from how to do a trunk chop to how to take a pencil trunk and grow it into a nice tree in 20 years. I wonder if the latter concept will be something that people laugh at ten years from now. I hope not.
"The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest." ― Ursula K. Le Gui
Most of my bonsai trees are alone in their pots, but very few trees in nature are found without other trees near them, although it can be dramatic when they are, e.g., the Lone Cypress, El Árbol del Tule, the Tree of Life, the Lahaina Banyan Tree. In our bonsai trees, we do often strive for the dramatic, but at times, it is nice to try a forest, raft or other group planting.
In general, there are a few rules, the most universally recognized of these being that the group should contain an odd number of trees. I don't necessarily buy into the reason this is so, but if you have 2 or 4 or 6 trees, you will have people questioning why you used an even number, so if you ever want to share your creation with others, you should start by selecting an odd number of trees. For example, this planting that I photographed at the Huntington Library earlier this year, has nine trees.
The group should include trees of different sizes, both in height and girth. Generally, the tallest trees will be near the middle of the group, although having the tallest to one side is also acceptable. Having the shortest trees in the middle can look unnatural and awkward, although I have seen compositions in which a small tree beneath two larger ones works well. Thinner trees are usually placed toward the outside and/or the back, allowing larger and thicker trees at the front to provide perspective the creates the illusion of greater size and distance in the landscape. Usually trees in a group planting will have upright shapes, although it is also common to have upright trees in the middle or one side, with trees along one or both outer edges being more at an angle, like a windswept tree. Most group plantings contain trees of the same species, or at least the same botanical family, but not always. Accent plants or other plants of a different species can add a lot of value to a bonsai landscape.
One of the great advantages of a group planting is that it is a suitable destination for trees that are, taken alone, deeply flawed. If you have a tree with no good lower branches, but you put it in the middle of a group planting, it might look great. If you have a tree with poor growth on one side or the other, putting it at the edge of a forest planting works. Even in John Naka's famous forest planting, Goshin, some of the trees used in the group would be uninteresting on their own, but together, they form a spectacular group.
The pot needs to be fairly large, and preferably very shallow. The color and shape can vary according to the trees and their arrangement, but most often, an oval shape is used. Slabs are also popular for forest plantings. Like any other bonsai planting, good, well-draining bonsai soil must be used. I still like my mixes of 4 parts non-organic soil to 1 part organic matter (compost, potting soil, small orchid bark).
I haven't done a slab planting yet, so I'll cover that another time. For a forest planting in a pot, these are the steps to take once the pot and the trees have been chosen:
It is best done when the time is right for repotting, so in most cases, that means early spring. Once you finish your design and everything is in place, put your forest in a shady place, or a place that mostly gets morning sun, for two months or so, and give it a year before doing any radical pruning or shaping. In a couple of years, when it is time to repot the group, hopefully you will have a root mass that has blended into a single mat of roots. Like Goshin.
I only have a couple of yose-ue plantings, and to be honest, they aren't impressive enough to share yet. Perhaps next spring, I'll do a post about one of those.
"No longer just a tree, but a tree that is a work of art." ― Laura Green
One of the coolest things about being in a club is the chance to collect yamadori - wild material - on field trips with the club. One of my clubs has the chance to go once a year to a spot in the Mojave Desert where Harry Hirao takes us to collect California junipers. My daughter and I went for the first time about six months ago. To get there, we had to leave the house at 4 a.m. (actually, we should have left at 3:30 a.m., but that's another story). After a long drive along the freeway, we had a shorter, but still long, drive up a canyon - I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say which canyon. But by about 7 a.m., we were ready to be led into the Mojave Desert on foot by Harry Hirao in search of living art to bring home to our gardens:
Theoretically, this is the kind of beauty we want to take home. Massive gnarled deadwood trunks with lots of healthy foliage. In reality, however, it was way too big for us:
We opted for a much smaller and safer tree to collect. This is where we chose to prospect for our tree.
This would be our first and only tree collected on this dig. It was modest compared to some of the trees that other members were targeting, but we figured that it was small enough for us to collect quickly, with a sufficient root ball, easy to transport and more likely to survive our first attempt to take a California juniper from the wild.
After about 30 minutes of digging and pruning, we had a good trench and we were exposing a decent root ball.
We sprayed the exposed roots frequently and used a lopper to cut larger roots.
Once we had the entire root ball out of the ground, we sprayed it, wrapped it in burlap, and sprayed the burlap.
And, of course, you have to backfill the hole when you are done. If the landowner loses a few head of cattle because they break their legs by stepping into holes dug by bonsai club members, the club won't be invited back.
The whole process was done by about 9 a.m., after which we made turkey sandwiches and had Second Breakfast at our car. We spent some time after that exploring, and we attempted to dig out a second, more dramatic tree, but after digging more than two feet down, all we found was a single massive tap root, and we had to abandon that attempt.
Some people got a lot more trees than we got, but that's okay. We liked our one tree, and we figured we'd wait and see how we did with this one before pulling a bunch of others out of the ground. There's no point in taking these things out of the desert just to kill them and use them for firewood. Besides, we learned more from seeing what others got, and how they worked them back at the cars, than we did from our own dig. Next time, we will try for more trees.
Once we got our tree home, we soaked it overnight in water with some B-1 (a lot of smart people disagree on whether that helps) and then potted it up in pure agricultural pumice.
We gave it a shady spot in the garden, hooked a mister to our sprinkler line to mist it a couple of times a day, misted it by hand every morning and every afternoon when I got home from work, and hoped to see new growth within a few months. It took about 8 weeks, but we started getting new, juvenile growth all over the place. After 6 months, it's still going strong. I won't start doing anything to it until it's been in its pot for at least a year. Maybe two. Here's how it looks today:
Now that I know how to safely get these things home and give them proper aftercare, I hope to make it out for another dig and get two or three more, perhaps including a few shohin.
"You're only as good as your last haircut." ― Fran Lebowitz
I read a recent piece by Walter Pall that struck a chord with me. In it, Pall notes that every bonsai book describes how to work on deciduous trees to obtain the best possible ramification, and all of them recommend pinching. Pinching requires that immediately after the first bud break, the new shoots are pinched back to one or two buds, and that shoots that don’t grow suitably, are removed. The goal is to avoid long internodes and to force the tree to produce visibly smaller buds and tinier leaves with its second flush. With that, the tree is said to reach a fine ramification over many years. (All, nearly verbatim, from his post)
Pall explains that a tree is actually badly weakened by the removal of the early new growth and can only build weak “starvation” buds, which then do indeed will grow smaller shoots. The second flush is then clipped off again, and the tree is weakened even more. Eventually, the tree will become so weak that it is at risk to die.
Amen. My collecting of boxwood hedges this year taught me that hedge cutting produces fabulously healthy trees with spectacular ramification.
Look at that branch structure. Granted, it's not shaped the way I would want it shaped as a bonsai. It's shaped as part of a large rectangular hedge. But if the hedge trimming over the years on this tree had been done in a shape that I liked for it as an individual bonsai, the shape, branch development and health of this tree would be amazing.
My failures the first time I got into bonsai support the argument that pinching back all the new growth can lead to weak trees. Pall is not the first bonsai artist I've heard say that. I read other articles (which unfortunately I didn't copy or save as a link) that came to the same conclusion. In fact, one author compared the health of his potted and pinched trees with the ones he left growing in the ground, and he noticed not only that the ones in the ground were stronger and had better ramification, but that weaker trees that he had put in the ground to recover were developing better branch ramification and were quickly becoming healthier than his stronger trees that were in training pots and trimmed using traditional methods. He noticed that the healthiest trees were the ones he had ignored and simply hedge cut a few times a year. My current instructor often advises me to treat my potted trees the same. We take our pruning shears around the edges and give the tree a "haircut", as he calls it. It's much better than the traditional advice of pinching back new growth.
Why is that, and how could we have been led astray?
Pall speculates that when the first bonsai trees were brought to the West, buyers were advised to care for the in such a way as to keep them in their original purchased state, because no one assumed that the buyers would end up developing bonsai for themselves. Intuitively, that makes sense. If you buy a tree and want it to remain as is for as long as possible, pinching new growth will do that. But not all advice on maintaining appearances in finished trees should be taken as gospel on how to care for all of your trees, including the ones you are trying to develop for the future.
While developing a tree, you need, first and foremost, a healthy tree. You want trunks to thicken, branches to thicken, secondary and tertiary branches to develop, ramify and thicken. You want a lot of branches to give the appearance of age and to give you many options for later styling and shaping. You want the roots to ramify and thicken, too. That means you need a strong healthy tree that produces a lot of green growth. If this means large leaves develop on your tree, and a lot of new growth appears in places that aren't part of your long term plans, so be it. You can always root prune, defoliate and use other means of leaf reduction later. If your tree weakens because you zapped it of all its energy-producing leaves and branches for several years, none of this will happen as quickly as you want. It might never happen.
Treating developing trees the same as you treat "finished" trees makes little sense. And honestly, how many of your bonsai trees can be considered finished? According to Lynn Perry, a bonsai is considered finished if five limbs from the base of the trunk upward are completely trained and require only yearly pruning , but no further wiring. Generally, deciduous trees reach this stage at about 35 years of age and conifers at about 45 years. (Bonsai: Trees and Shrubs - A Guide to the Methods of Kyuzo Murata) By that definition, most trees are not finished. None of my trees are finished, and I'll be dead before most of them will ever have a chance to be finished. So I shouldn't be pruning my trees as if they are finished.
So how do you prune a tree that is not finished, and why is hedge pruning advantageous?
The trees have evolved to put out new branches and leaves to absorb sunlight and convert it into stored fuel and mass. This energy allows the tree to produce new buds and new leaves that, in turn store more fuel and create more mass that absorbs more sunlight in a constant energy cycle. If you pinch back a limited amount of new growth, the tree will direct its energy in other, more productive and successful buds and leaves, but if you are pinching off most of the new growth, the tree has to use some of its stored energy to start over from scratch. Long term, this is not a good mechanism for the tree. On the other hand, if the initial growth is left alone, the shoots extend and harden off. The leaves produce carbohydrates that feed the rest of the tree much in the same way that your food feeds your own body, from the tips of the branches to trunk and down to the tips of the roots. This enables the tree to better survive any radical pruning later, including a hedge cut.
When you give your tree its haircut in late spring, some of the shoots are pruned more than others, but the result leaves your tree shaped roughly the way you want it, with many of the shoots left intact and others (often the longest ones with the largest leaves) sheared off, triggering a new rush of fresh back budding. Reducing the canopy allows sunlight in, which also increases back budding. This is the mechanism that causes hedges to develop dense branches and foliage, which is what you want to see in your bonsai, too. This process can be repeated again in late summer, triggering a second rush of back budding.
After a year of more feral growth, your tree is now free to be shaped, clipped, wired and otherwise trained to your liking, but it is stronger and your choices are more plentiful. When the tree is dormant, a proper shaping can be performed. You can remove undesirable shoots and stumps that were produced by the spring and summer hedge cuts. After this shaping, the tree looks as refined as it would have if you had pinched back all year, but it is healthier, stronger and ready to start the growth cycle again strongly in the spring.
When your tree is more finished and you consider showing it, returning to the pinching-back method during the showing season(s) is fine, but to avoid weakening your tree, consider giving it a few seasons of hedge cutting once you're done showing it.
"The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns." ― Swami Sivananda
and he doesn't buy bonsai by the roadside, either. Sometimes, the roadside, swap meet or fair vendor has decent material, but not often. This fellow has a few trees that are a little bigger than your typical mallsai, and it's possible that they are sitting in nice, coarse, well-draining soil, but I doubt it. I would not buy one of these trees. Even if they aren't cursed with terrible soil, they don't seem to have any of the qualities that are most desirable in bonsai - the appearance of age, a tapered trunk and strong surface root flare.
(Photo by J. Lucas)
Most beginners get their first bonsai from malls, garden centers, fair vendors, swap meets, big box stores or roadside vendors. Most of the time, these are poor trees, styled quickly and unimaginatively, and often unhealthy and rooted in poor soil. Bonsai enthusiasts like to call these trees "mallsai". They usually have only three things going for them: a cheap but suitable bonsai pot, foliage in the silhouette of a tree and enough dirt to make it from the grower to the seller to the buyer before the tree meets its end. Because of their ability to look alive for many weeks even after dying, junipers are the most common species of mallsai.
If you ever get one of those trees, you need to get it into well-draining soil as soon as possible. If it has glued rocks on the surface, remove those immediately. Give it sunlight, water (from above, not by submersing the whole pot in a tub like the directions often say), a small amount of fertilizer (half-strength) and time and then maybe you can prune it into something healthy and more interesting down the road.
If you already got a mallsai and it is dead or dying, don't be discouraged. Go to a bonsai nursery or, really, any nursery, and find an ordinary plant from among the species suitable for bonsai, and make your own bonsai tree. Just don't go out and buy another roadside bonsai.
California is home to a lot of great bonsai artists, and one of the best way to meet them is at the Golden State Bonsai Federation's Annual Convention. I got to sit in on the work of artists like Peter Warren, Suthin Sukosolvisit and David DeGroot, (admittedly, not all from California....) talk to artists like David Nguy and Cheryl Manning, see some of the best exhibits the U.S. has to offer, and of course, check out the wares of a wide variety of vendors. I only had time to attend one of the four days of the GSBF convention, and I didn't have a chance to sign up for any of the popular private workshops, but I did spend time in the Masters Workshops, and sat in, for short stints, as a silent observer to a couple of other workships, including one on California junipers and one on Itoigawa shimpaku junipers.
Here's Peter Warren working on a shohin olive. I've seen some of Peter's workshops on Youtube, but it was much better sitting in, having a chance to ask questions and getting to look up close, and at different angles, at any point during the styling:
The first styling I sat in on actually was this juniper, expertly shaped by David DeGroot, the caretaker of the Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection. At the break, I bought a copy of his book Basic Bonsai Design, which he graciously signed for me:
This was a large California juniper, styled and carved by Suthin Sukosolvisit, who is doing a special demonstration this Wednesday for Dai Ichi Bonsai Kai:
David Nguy is becoming known as "Mr. California Juniper II" in California. His first teacher was Harry Hirao, so there is a logical lineage there. His class sold out quickly, and after watching part of it, I could see why. What they did with this tree was nothing short of amazing. That top branch was pulled down about 18 inches:
This was David DeGroot's afternoon project, a Chinese elm clump. I'm growing over 100 Chinese elms, so this was of great interest to me:
Peter Warren did the other Chinese elm clump:
This is Peter Macasieb working on Tak Shimazu's class on Itoigawa shimpaku junipers. Peter is active in Dai Ichi Bonsai Kai and has helped me on my trees before. He's one of the brightest guys in the hobby.
I've put up a gallery of the trees that were on exhibit this weekend. You can check out more photos on the GSBF Convention Facebook page. There was also a pretty good writeup on it in the Valavanis Bonsai Blog.
"The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest." ― William Blake
We don't harvest much from our bonsai trees, but it's a good time of year to look at our trees and compare them to how they looked last winter. That feels almost like a harvest. I have no trees that I consider "finished", so I want to see development in all of them, and for the most part, I do. I'll add that to my list of things to be thankful for this month.
We are now well into fall; growth is slowing down and some fall color is showing here in Zone 10. My trees are pushing their energy into the roots for the winter. Here are some of the things I can or will do this month as we get into the heart of autumn:
That's a long list, but it's actually not a lot to do, and since I don't have much daylight in which to do it, it works out. Next month, there will be even less to do, and with Daylight Saving Time ending tonight, I'll have even less daylight in which to do it.
“Doors to beautiful things do not remain open forever.” ― Mehmet Murat İldan
Shibui Bonsai, the largest Masakuni tools dealer in the U.S., has closed its doors. The website simply says:
Shibui Bonsai will be closing effective September 30, 2013 after 23 years in the business.
We want to thank you for your past business and to tell you how much we have enjoyed having you as our customer.
We will not be able to accept any new orders.
I had been expecting to see them at the 2013 GSBF Convention tomorrow.
On a related note, I'm going to the 2013 GSBF Convention tomorrow.
"If it's too good to be true, honey, it probably is." ― Anonymous/Everyone
I got faked out for a moment at Home Depot.
Look at that. Five gallon Japanese maples with a sign that says 3 for $10!
Oh.
It's a sale on bark nuggets. They just used the Japanese maples to lean the sign up. Hmmph.
"Survival is triumph enough." ― Harry Crews
This Japanese white pine can be seen at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum at the United States National Arboretum. In 1976, as a Bicentennial gift, it was donated to the American people by bonsai master Masaru Yamaki. It has been in training since 1625, so it is close to, if not more than, 400 years old, and among other things, it survived the bombing of Hiroshima. Hence, it is sometimes called the Hiroshima Survivor. According to the National Bonsai Foundation:
On the morning of August 6, 1945, all the Yamaki family members were inside their home. The bomb exploded about three kilometers (less than two miles) from the family compound. The blast blew out all the glass windows in the home, and each member of the family was cut from the flying glass fragments. Miraculously, none of them suffered any permanent injury.
The great old Japanese white pine and a large number of other bonsai were sitting on benches in the garden. Amazingly, none of these bonsai were harmed by the blast either, as the nursery was protected by a tall wall. The bonsai originally came from Miyajima Island which is just south of Hiroshima. Japanese white pine bonsai from Miyajima are considered very valuable because they are so rare.
For more information about this remarkable tree, check out this video.
No matter how long I live, I will never develop a tree this awesome.
"When gardeners use native plants, they can have beautiful landscapes." ― Dr. Douglas Tallamy
Left to right, they are two varieties of manzanita (arctostaphylos), a chamise (adenostoma fasciculatum), a false indigo (amorpha fruticosa) and a fern of the desert (lysiloma thornberi).
I got them at the Tree of Life Nursery. Plants like these can also sometimes be found for sale at places like the Fullerton Arboretum, the Shipley Nature Center or the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them other than water them infrequently, fertilize them very lightly and plant them in a very rocky mix of stuff like decomposed granite and pumice.
Manzanita has the coolest bark of any tree on the planet. There's a myth, that I once believed, that it was illegal to own those, but in reality, it's just illegal to collect certain types and/or from certain places. They are tricky to train and grow, however. It is generally only safe to prune in late summer or early autumn. They are prone to disease, so before pruning, it is prudent to use a 10% bleach solution on your tools. In a pot, it should be watered only once every week or two. In the ground, maybe once a month. They grow fast, and die back significantly if you prune the roots significantly. The foliage isn't great material for bonsai, but the trunks and branches can make up for that.
The chamise is a really cool bush that grows naturally in the hills above my home, so I know that it will do well here and I want to eventually grow a lot more of those. This is a black diamond cultivar. The foliage is really tight and the trunks look aged even when they are small, so it might make a really cool bonsai.
The fern of the desert is a northern Mexico native. It won't do well in a shallow pot, and it doesn't cope well with cold temps, but it might make for a pretty good bunjin.
My false indigo probably needs to go into the ground for a couple of years. I will plant it in the spring and see what happens. It's a deciduous flowering plant, but so far, it's not losing any leaves.
I'm thinking about buying some San Diego mahogany and California juniper. I'd also like to get some pinon pine, too, but that's more easily collected than bought. Hopefully, next year I'll have a couple of decent native species shohins, and they will be trees that few other people are working on, which will make it all the more interesting.
"All art is but imitation of nature." ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
The tradition of Japanese bonsai is to seek to imitate nature in miniature. Most of the time, we want our trees to look natural, following the patterns and appearance of large, aged trees in the wild. I often look at large trees, whether in the forest or in the city, to get ideas for how to style my bonsai. Here are a couple that I particularly liked this week:
Notice how quite naturally, the lower branches bend downward, but the upper branches reach skyward. Newer growth tends to grow toward the sun, while older, heavier branches are pulled toward the ground by natural forces, even in places like this house in Southern California, where snow never burdens the boughs during the winter. Also worth noting, the apex of this tree is a rounded crown consisting of many branches.
This is a great tree is keep in mind when styling a foemina juniper.
Same house, different tree, other side of the property. I don't know what kind of tree this is, but I like the form, and if it was a bonsai, aside from the two large trunk-crossing branches, I'd find its shape very pleasing. I have several Japanese boxwoods that could be styled in this manner, and I think it would work nicely. I have some Chinese elms that might work well in this style, too. They are all still very immature, however, and it will take me several years to get them to look even remotely like this.
With Halloween approaching, it also occurred to me that it would scare the hell out of me to go trick-or-treating at this house if I was five years old. If I was 40 years younger and you told me an old witch lived in this house, I would believe you.
"We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously." ― Bottom, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I.
In this hobby, there is no substitute for personal interaction with others. You can read books and watch videos, but going to workshops, club meetings and shows is a superior way to learn your craft. In Southern California, where I live, there are a great many clubs to explore. Last night, I was in Gardena, for the monthly meeting of Dai Ichi Bonsai Kai. Tonight, it's Kofu Kai, to which I'm going to be quite late which I will miss because of the college football schedule.
Here is a list of the Southern California bonsai clubs I know about. I'm sure there are several others I do not know. If you know some, post a comment. If I find more, I'll edit this post to include them.
Los Angeles:
Dai Ichi Bonsai Kai - http://daiichibonsaikai.wordpress.com/
Ko Yu Kai Shohin Club - http://koyukaibonsai.wordpress.com/
Descanso Bonsai Society - http://www.descanso-bonsai.com/
California Bonsai Society - http://californiabonsaisociety.com/
Santa Anita Bonsai Society - http://www.sabonsai.org/
Sansui Kai of Southern California http://www.sansui-kai.org/
Conejo Valley Bonsai Society - http://www.cvbs-bonsai.org/
South Coast Bonsai Association - http://www.southcoastbonsai.org
Marina Bonsai Club - http://vjcc.com/vjcc.old/inside_03-03.htm
Sanpu Kai (no website I know of)
Shohin Bonsai Society (Arcadia) (no website I know of)
Baiko-en Bonsai Kenkyu Kai (Arcadia) (no website I know of)
I've also heard of a San Gabriel Valley Satsuki Bonsai Society, but I don't know if it's active.
Orange County:
Kofu Bonsai Kai - http://www.kofukai.org/
Orange County Bonsai Society - http://ocbonsai.org/
Orange Empire Bonsai Society (no website but details here)
Satsuki Bonsai Society of Orange County (no website I know of)
Vietnamese Bonsai Society - http://www.hoicaykiengvietnamusa.com/
Hoi Bonsai Viet (Westminster) (no website I know of)
Inland Empire:
Chino Bonsai Club - http://chinobonsaiclub.org/
Inland Empire Bonsai (Riverside, no website I know of)
[not related to Spokane's Inland Empire Bonsai]
San Diego County:
San Diego Bonsai Society - http://www.sandiegobonsaiclub.com/
San Pu Kai Bonsai Club - http://www.sanpukai.org/
North of L.A.:
Bonsai Club of Santa Barbara - http://www.santabarbarabonsai.org/
Santa Maria Bonsai Club - http://smbonsai.blogspot.com/
Central Coast Bonsai Club (Nipomo, no website I know of)
*California Bonsai Studio - http://www.californiabonsai.com/bonsai-workshops/
*Not a club, but has $10 training meetings and free monthly workshops, so it's like a club...
I'm a member of three of these clubs, but plan to visit at least 3 or 4 others soon. One thing I've noticed is that each club is very different from the others, in so many ways ... formality, goals, size, age, levels of expertise, personality ... if you are close enough to more than one, and you don't feel quite at home at one, try another. I've felt welcomed at all of them, but each one has a different appeal to me. Your experiences may vary.
[Updated 2-1-14]
"To every thing there is a season," ― Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
We are now well into fall, enjoying the last weeks of our trees' active growth periods. Here in Zone 10, where I live, we're not seeing much fall color yet. My maples and sweetgums are all still mostly green, and I'm still seeing growth on many of my trees. Soon, however, the maple, ginkgo, liquidambar and others will lose their green and then drop their colorful leaves. The junipers and pines will slow their growth and trees will start pushing their energy into the roots for the winter. Here's some of the things I can or will do this month as we get into the heart of autumn:
That's actually a lot to do when I'm getting home from work only about an hour before sunset. Starting next month, there will be a lot less to do, and a lot less daylight in which to do it.
"It must have philosophy, botany, artistry, human quality behind it to be a bonsai." ― John Naka
Today, I stumbled upon a cool infographic at Bonsai Empire. Bonsai Empire is a pretty good website for bonsai devotees. It contains a home page with popular links, including the new infographic, a list, with photos, of the Top 10: Greatest Bonsai trees [bonus: not in annoying slideshow format] and a list of Top 10: Most popular "Bonsai of the Day" images. It has pages for beginners (Origin of Bonsai, a Species Guide and The Basics) hosts a blog and a gallery and has a reasonably active forum. I post there from time to time as user MichaelJ.
Here's the image:
Courtesy of: Bonsai Empire.
As an aside, if you like bonsai forums, the one to avoid now is the International Bonsai Forum. It's good for searches only. I think it's mods might have all died in car crash or something, because it is completely overrun by spammers. It was once a place for great information from other bonsai enthusiasts of all levels of expertise. Now, it is all about bodybuilding, weight loss, buying gold, enlarging your junk, having lots and lots of sex with strangers, improving your golf swing, viewing porn, buying bracelets and lamps and picking a good dermatologist. You have to get 4-5 pages deep into most of the sub-forums to find actual bonsai-related posts
“Growth is a part of change.” ― Toba Beta
The change is that I took all 25 boxwoods and pruned the thick green walls of foliage from their boxy edges, leaving behind a bunch of nearly barren trunks and large branches.
The growth followed in less than a month. I now have buds breaking out all over the place. In another month or two, I can finish the pruning and eliminate all of the unwanted branches that I left in place only to improve my odds of budding back on certain branches.
This has been true for 24 of the 25 trees I claimed. Two of them had been sitting out, already pulled from the ground, for a full week when I got to them. One of those two looks like it's dying (although I'm not ready to give up on it yet) and the other one has recovered nicely. So my success rate is likely to be either 96% ir 100%. Both are higher numbers than I have expected to realize.
"Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all." ― Thomas Carlyle
So I was clipping an olive trunk, about 5/8" thick at the top, like this,
and this happened to my Joshua Roth concave cutters. The little piece flew up and hit me in the face, just below the eye. Is this a bad tool, or did I pick the wrong tool? What tool should I have used to top the leader on this tree?
Something better, apparently.
“Some trees are too deeply rooted to move … And if they are uprooted, they will die…” ― Jocelyn Murray
When that happens, you can always air layer! This week, I learned how to air layer using the soil and pot method, rather than the moss and plastic method. It's not very difficult.
Hopefully, a couple of months later, my tree will become three trees.
For an example of how NOT to air layer, watch this video:
I can't imagine this having worked. I didn't see any follow-up videos on his air layered Brazilian pepper tree, so I would presume that it failed.
"You know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." ― George Washington, according to Parson Weems
The Orange Empire Bonsai Society is a club in Orange County that I had not visited until last weekend. It doesn't have a website and I didn't know where or how to find it. Last month, however, there was an announcement at another one of my clubs about Orange Empire putting on a clinic at The Plant Stand, so I decided to check it out.
I arrived to see club member Gary Lai demonstrating how to chop (albeit with a saw, not a hatchet) a Chinese elm tree to create a broom style bonsai. It's a fairly simple method, even for a dilettante. You take a healthy tree, flat cut it, wrap the cut with plastic to create a "cup" above the wound, then stuff the cup with wet cotton. This encourages new growth to sprout up all around the edge of the cut.
When you've finished, it looks something like this:
And if all goes well, in a few years, your tree will resemble this:
There were a couple of other demonstrations, but my pictures of those were poorer, so I'll probably skip posting about those. They had a raffle, too. I bought $10 worth of raffle tickets and got a large pot, three smaller Japanese pots, and a baggie with some trident maple seeds. As usual, I didn't win a demo tree, but that's still a pretty nice haul for ten bucks.
Orange Empire Bonsai Society meets every 4th Saturday of the month from 10 am to 12 pm at Southern California Boiler, 5331 Business Dr., Huntington Beach, CA 92649. I'll probably try to attend one of the club's regular Saturday morning meetings later this year, and maybe I'll join.
“Teaching is the highest form of understanding.” ― Aristotle
There are only a couple of European bonsai masters I'm familiar with, and one of them, Mauro Stemberger, is coming to Orange County next month to do a workshop with Kofu Kai. Stemberger is the artist behind Italian Bonsai Dream. I'd like the opportunity to work on some material with an artist like Mauro Stemberger, especially for the bargain price of $55 for almost an entire day, but it's on a Wednesday, and honestly, I'm not at all sure I have any material worth working on with him right now.
All of my substantial material is still very rough pre-bonsai. It wouldn't be fair for me to take one of the ten coveted spots to waste on such preliminary material. Hopefully he will be back soon (though not too soon) and I can bring some quality, quasi-developed material for him to help me make great.
"A forest of these trees is a spectacle too much for one man to see." ― David Douglas
I don't think David Douglas was talking about these spectacular junipers, but he might as well have been.
The first time I saw this photo, I didn't even notice the man in the picture. My first thought was "I'd love to collect a tree like that for my collection." Then I saw the guy. So this thing is huge, and quite possibly the most remarkable specimen I've ever seen.
[Reprinted with permission from Boon Manakitivipart]
And it's going nowhere. You couldn't collect that thing even with a heavy construction equipment. It's fun to imagine, though. Then again, if I did manage to pot it up, it would take up my entire yard. I guess you really can have too much of a good thing.
Last weekend, bonsai artist John Nielsen did a demonstration of wiring and styling a prostrata juniper at Kofu Kai in Anaheim. Mr. Neilson is a certified arborist with training in pest management, irrigation systems and tree injection. He manages a 200+ employee tree care company in Orange County. He is an active member of the bonsai community who has studied with Harry Hirao, Mel Ikeda and Tak Shimazu and has taught for many years. He is a member of Kofu Kai, GSBF, and the California Bonsai Society. He is rumored to be a talented fisherman, as well.
The material he was working on was a juniper he bought 5-7 years ago at Muranaka Bonsai Nursery in Nipomo. It had a trunk that was at least 3" and had some nice movement. Here's the before shot:
He pruned the tree quite substantially, and quickly, having studied it carefully in advance. It would have taken me a long time to decide what to cut and what to keep.
After pruning and scraping the jin, he wired. Because most of the lower branches were fairly thick, to bend them down, he used a technique involving wiring them to the pot. This is a technique I'd never used my first time in the bonsai hobby, and had used only once, and only recently, this time.
The way you wire to the pot is as so:
As you can see, you can get strong downward movement even on thick, strong primary branches using this technique.
He left the upper branches pointing slightly up, to foster the development of a nice, broad apex.
In a couple of years, this is going to be an outstanding tree. It was raffled off at the end of the demo, but I didn't win. Maybe next time.
“What we want is a healthy canopy. If we go in there and say, 'Just plant a bunch of trees,' they'll just plant them in a random fashion..” ― Steve Allen.
One of the things I've noticed while pruning back my recently collected boxwoods is that the trees have all developed their own natural style beneath the canopy ― the surface of the hedge. The branch ramification is immense, and it all comes to a flat top and side that is green, with very little foliage underneath. I like the way these developed; I love the tight canopies; I just don't like the unnatural square shapes. So I started looking around for an accepted style of bonsai that might be a little bit similar. I found one. It's called the Pierneef style.
It's named after a South African artist named Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef. He had a distinctive style, influenced by the South African landscape, that is widely recognized. Here is an example of his work, A Summer Afternoon, Bushveld, painted in 1928:
Someone on Bonsai Dans Les Chenes, one of my favorite Facebook groups, recently posted a photo of a Seiju Chinese elm done in this style, and I thought it was awesome.
[Republished with permisson from Randy Davis]
From what I can tell of the style, the height of first branch is not particularly important. Most of the foliage is at the very top of the tree, which forms a broad, rounded, umbrella-like canopy. Lower canopies can be used, as in the above photo, but are not necessary. The major trunk splits and major secondary branches tend to have 90 degree angles.
At the first branch, the tree splits almost into a twin-trunk style, with one trunk growing up without significant tertiary branches until just below the top of the canopy, and the other trunk shooting out several tertiary branches to feed the canopy. As the branches approach the canopy, the ramification becomes finer, still mostly at repetitive sharp angles.
The
canopy width is roughly double the height of the first branch. Canopy height is anywhere from one to two times the diameter of the trunk at the soil line. Nebari is not particularly pronounced, and the taper is not particularly sharp. Deadwood is acceptable but not important.
If I'm misconstruing the rules, if they are rules, I'm sure someone will correct me. For now, these are the guidelines I am going to apply. I'll try this one a handful of boxwoods, maples and elms, and see what comes of it.
"Winning." ― Charlie Sheen
I am a member of three bonsai clubs, and about once every seven months, they all meet on the same weekend ― one on Friday night, one on Saturday night and one on Sunday afternoon. I wasn't able to make it to the Friday night club this weekend, but I made it to the other two. All of the clubs have monthly raffles, and I usually spend $10-20 on raffle tickets. This was a good weekend. I didn't win the biggest prizes from either raffle, but I did get some good stuff:
Saturday night yielded a decent brown glazed bonsai pot, two decent bouganvillea in five gallon pots and three one gallon shimpaku junipers. One is struggling a bit, but I should be able to nurse it to health. The other two are quite healthy and vigorous.
Today, I got a pretty good sized unglazed bonsai pot, one small blue glazed Japanese bonsai pot and one small orangish bonsai pot. I got a nice Chinese elm with about a 3/4" trunk, a small white pine seedling, a rubber tree plant in a large plastic training pot, about a kilo of wire and an aloe vera plant.
Total expenditure: $30 covered both raffles. Not bad, especially while we work our way through the crazy acquisition phase that most beginners go through.
“Love your neighbour; yet don't pull down your hedge.” ― Benjamin Franklin.
I love that my neighbor did pull out his hedge. I collected 25 large boxwoods from his hedges over the last two weeks. All of them were removed via an unusual method, for bonsai enthusiasts, at least. The hedge owner wrapped chains around their trunks and yanked them out of the ground with a pickup truck. He left them for any takers, and I was the most enthusiastic of the takers.
Surprisingly, there was little damage to the trunks, and they came up with decent root balls. I decided to lightly prune the edges of the root balls, put them all in 5 gallon or 14 inch pots in bonsai soil, and then prune them back hard. Pruning them back hard accompished three purposes: it reduces the demand on the root ball; it reduces the size of the tree; and it allows for vigorous back budding, rather than a bunch of empty (though well ramified) branches with heavy foliage at the edge of the former hedge border.
Because these things were sitting out for a while before I even found out about them (two sat in his lawn for a whole week), I soaked each tree's root ball for anywhere from 10 minutes to overnight, depending upon the state of the plant and its roots.
This one soaked for about an hour. Look at how huge the foliage mass is. This was a big chunk of my neighbor's boxwood hedge.
I pruned this one a little too hard, I think. Boxwoods generally will survive a severe pruning. I have had some experience with that first hand over the last few months with my Beautifully Butchered Boxwood Bonsai. However, back budding sometimes does not happen if you prune a large branch and leave no green growing at the tip. So some of this may die back. I left enough foliage on most of the important branches, though, so I'm not too panicked over this mistake.
This soil is a mix of 80% pumice & diatomaceous Earth, and 20% potting soil and small orchid bark.
The tree went into this 14" pot that's about five or six inches deep. That's large enough to contain the whole root ball. After I filled the pot with my soil and chopsticked the roots to fill in all the gaps, I watered it and it looked like this:
I plan to leave it alone until late Autumn, when I will move toward dormancy after what I hope will be a nice little bloom of new growth. At that point, I will probably cut away all of the branches that did not develop new growth I might style this one unlike anything else I have ever done. The posts of the clump sort of remind me of the Caryatids of the Erechtheion in Athens. I might do something to try to evoke that imagery, as long as the tree affords me that option.
For now, however, I just water, feed, sun and wait.
"To see things in the seed, that is genius." ― Lao Tzu
Autumn is upon us. One of the things I love about Autumn is the chance to collect seeds to sow next spring. I'll be hunting down acorns, collecting sweetgum seed pods and pulling hundreds of Japanese maple seeds off the trees in my backyard. They are still green, but it's getting close to the time to pick and store them
Here are the six steps I follow for germinating dozens of Japanese maple seedlings in the spring:
1. Starting in early Fall, as soon as I see the first pair of seeds on the ground, I pick all the seeds I can, and let them dry out until it is time to start the cold-stratifying process. I store the seeds in a cool dry place until they are ready to start stratifying. I put mine in a paper bag in my garage.
2. I pick the date I would like to plant the seedlings outside. This will vary a lot by zone. I'm in zone 10, so a late February or March date works for me. In other zones, it might be much later. It should be after the last possible spring frost if that's an issue where you live.
2. Calendar a date roughly 90 days before the planting date to begin stratifying the seeds. For me, that may be late November or December. Others might be looking at beginning to stratify in February for a May planting day.
3. Break off the seed wings and soak the seeds in warm to hot water overnight. I use hot tap water. Never use boiling water. It'll kill the seeds. After the seeds are in, I let it drop to room temp without worrying about rewarming the water.
4. 24 hours later, I put the seeds in tray with a planting medium. I use plastic trays from microwaveble food, but you can use anything. My preferred medium is coarse builder's sand and peat moss in equal portions. Vermiculite or other media works, too, as long as it is sterile. (If it isn't sterile, moisten and cover it and cook it in an oven in a pan for 90 minutes at 200 degrees and it will be.) Make sure the tray of soil and seeds is moist, but not dripping wet. Put it in a plastic bag and poke a few holes in the bag. Put the whole thing in a refrigerator or wine cooler in a place where it will not freeze.
5. Leave the bag alone for 60 days. After 60 days, start checking it about once a week. If there are sprouts, pick them and plant them in a flat or seedling pot with good draining soil. I mix in a lot of diatomaceous earth. After 90 days, sow anything that hasn't yet sprouted in a flat with similar well-draining soil. Don't plant too deep - barely cover the seed and the sprouted root with soil.
6. Water thoroughly after planting, then allow the soil to dry almost completely before watering again. If you live in a cooler climate or one with wildly varying spring temps, consider using a heating lamp, or better yet, a heating pad under your flat, set to 70 degrees. I bought a heating pad at my local hydroponics store for just $20.
For a few cents worth of soil (plus a heating lamp or pad if you went that route), come late Spring, you'll have plenty of free seedlings. It's the cheapest and easiest way to grow bonsai trees.
"Small museums are great. Big museums are a drag. ." ― Peter Zumthor
The Kofu Bonsai Kai exhibit at the Bowers Museum was relatively small, with just 28 trees, but like the Bowers Museum itself, it packed a lot of quality within its confines. Here is a link to the gallery of photos I took. I took them at night, in low light, so the photos don't really do the trees justice, but they look great nonetheless. I do not have a tree in this exhibit. I'm hoping that by this time next year, I'll have something worth displaying.
Click the photo to see the first photo in the album and click through to check out all 28 trees.
"Less is more." ― Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
As I mentioned in my first blog post, right around around the turn of the century I took my last few trees and planted them in the ground as hedges. The one that did the best, in my opinion, was a boxwood that grew a nice thick trunk and some very nice nebari.
Last winter, I removed it from my hill and potted it in good soil. I then pruned it ― hard, I thought ― and started styling it in what I thought to be sort of a majestic oak style. By mid-summer, it looked like this.
I was fond of it, so I brought it into the July Kofu Kai meeting for critique by visiting bonsai master Roy Nagatoshi, the proprietor of Fuji Bonsai Nursery. Roy took a good long look at it, had me explain my plans for the tree, and then informed me that he thought it needed a different path. He sketched out an outline right there on the trunk, and asked if I wanted him to go to work on it. With some trepidation, I told him to do whatever he would do to it if it was his tree. The photo above shows him gleefully making the first big cut.
By the time he was done, it looked like this.
The club all laughed when he was done. Supposedly, this was because of the look on my face, but from where I was standing, I'd be more inclined to comment that you should have seen the look on their faces. I had more than a few people say that they couldn't imagine standing there in front of the club and seeing someone do that to their tree. But I accept the fact that I am the Bonsai Dilettante. If someone like Roy thinks this is going to produce a better tree, I'm willing to see how it goes.
Obviously, it has given the trunk good taper and interesting movement. Roy recommends pruning the new growth to develop a triangular shape to the foliage. That will take some time, of course, so for the next 6-10 months, all I'll be doing is watering and feeding the tree, and pinching back some of the new growth to promote ramification.
My kids have decided to name this tree. The name they chose is Meelo, because for several weeks, this tree was basically just one leaf. Meelo is a character from The Legend of Korra who was advised by the new Avatar to "be the leaf." [Link goes to a YouTube video loop of the scene they were talking about.] So far, after almost two months, Meelo looks like this:
I like what we've done to it, and I can't wait to see how it looks this time next year.
"The nice thing about the gallery shows is that without having to pay any money you can just go and see it." ― Yoko Ono
Kofu Bonsai Kai is presenting an exhibit at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (2002 N Main St Santa Ana, CA 92706) this week. It started Tuesday and ends Sunday. You can see the exhibit in person this weekend between 10 am and 4 pm. This weekend is also your last chance to see the museum's incredible exhibit on the Gems of the Medeci.
The bonsai and viewing stones display consists of 28 trees selected from private collections displayed in a traditional manner. All trees have been in training and have been taken to a final style over many years. The Viewing Stones, or "found art", are collected from areas in California, various parts of the United States and Asia. The artists, all members from Kofu Bonsai Kai, will be available each day to answer questions and to help you understand the beauty and simplicity of this exquisite and rewarding art form.
Free to members; free with paid admission; $8 individual ticket.
I'll be uploading an album of everyone's trees shorttly.
“Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come.” ― Karen Joy Fowler.
A homeowner decided to replace a boxwood hedge that had been there for 30 years. After they pulled them out, they were going to toss them all, lamenting the fact that it was going to take three weeks of filling their green bins before they were all gone. I was happy to help them avoid that inconvenience. We worked out a very simply arrangement. They agreed to let me have the boxwoods, and I agreed to taken them all away. I made sure to call my instructor and let him in on the deal, too. He filled the back of his ride with about five of them.
That trunk is almost three inches thick at the base. I got more than a dozen just like it. It took me a couple of days to pot them up. I had to buy new training pots and extra pumice and DE to finish the task. I'll prune them back a little harder and then wait until next spring before doing anything else.
I'm now done trying to root boxwood cuttings. These will keep me busy for quite some time, and boxwood is now the most numerous species in my collection aside from my 100+ Chinese elms.
Until this year, every single cutting I every took had died. Every single one. Hundreds. Maybe more. This year, I've finally learned the art of cloning. I tried cutting mixes, pure sand, pumice, peat moss, all sorts of stuff. The mix that finally worked was equal parts builder's sand and diatomite. This crabapple is the first one that put out new growth.
I have roots coming in on three more of these, plus some elm, ginko, and trumpet vine. No luck yet on any junipers. I'm thinking about taking a few cuttings of California juniper and seeing if I can grow some of those $35 five gallon plants I mentioned a couple of posts back.