RHS Malvern Spring Festival

Visiting an RHS Show for the First Time

Hi everyone,
Last week I got the opportunity to travel across the country to visit the RHS Malvern Spring Festival - think Chelsea Flower Show, but a fraction earlier and a lot easier to get your purchases home from!

Spoiler Alert - I bought a new Hosta

I was delighted to be invited by the lovely team from E-Coco Products to be their guest, get to meet and film them, and get loads of garden inspiration too!

Click the link below and come and join me in this week's YouTube video, see what I saw, and what I bought too ⌣

Enjoy!

Love 

Rebecca xx

Bonsai and a crisis of conscience - Tree #2 Zelkova serrata

Where do you Start, Pre-Bonsai, Developed Bonsai or Somewhere in between?

The greatest sum paid for a Bonsai was an ancient pine at 1.3 million dollars. Some trees are priceless heirlooms which have been tended by the same family for centuries. Obviously, these trees are WAY out of my reach financially, and I'm aware that I don't stand any chance of creating such an artwork in my lifetime. Slightly more attainable refined trees can sell for £1000 to £2000 and some Bonsai professionals advocate buying refined trees, so that you can get experience of handling a well grown, ramified tree with significant age, good nebari (the area where roots flare away from the trunk), beautiful bark, and maybe some jin or shari (dead wood) too...

But I'm a beginner, what if I invest in a tree nearing refinement and I wreck it, or worse kill it!? Not only will I have lost the tree and the money I spent on it, but also the work and dedication of the generations that developed and tended it. I feel the weight of that responsibility and I find it crippling.

I'm torn between two thought processes on how my Bonsai collection should take shape.

1) Developed Bonsai
My cynical side tells me that Bonsai professionals have nurseries full of trees that they want to sell, so of course they are going to tell you you need refined trees. And while it's true that a Bonsai is never finished, it does feel that a ramified tree would offer little creativity beyond changes to apex or tweaks here and there, because the main structure is set and has been for 30/40/50 years.

2) Young trees, seeds or seedlings
You can buy tree seeds, though for me that's never held much appeal - too much waiting! Or you can buy (or dig up (with permission)) young 'starter' trees, usually around 3-4 years old, they will be slender saplings, with few branches. They are a blank canvas, but they require patience (yes I know that's what Bonsai is all about), and they don't offer much opportunity to practice your skills in the early stages.

Or you can buy something in between...

Enter Tree #2 Zelkova serrata (Japanese Elm)

Zelkova serrata (Japanese Elm) approx 8 years old

Amazon Listing details:

• measurements inclusive of pot 46cm(h)x 26cm(w) x 21cm(d) and trunk diameter of 11mm at compost level
• the pot is a traditional 16cm plastic bonsai pot
• supplied with full instructions and to your door within 7 working days
• outdoor bonsai tree - tree pictured is the tree you will receive

Searching for supplies on Amazon recently, I spotted this tree and I liked what I saw. It was only £30 plus delivery. There was something about the shape that really interested me, and I've seen slightly bigger Zelkova, with less development sell for twice this price. It had been pot grown from seed for 8 years, giving it quite a natural deciduous shape, good internode lengths, and good division (bifurcation) of branches from 1 to 2, 2 to 4 etc.

It had a degree of ramification that I felt I could learn from, but it also had some areas that could be worked on straight away, such as a couple of multiple branches coming from one location, which I thinned to 2. I also cleaned the moss off the trunk as this can cause inverse taper if left on for a long time. Plus there was an old partial break up in the apex, so I pruned that out as well.

I think for me, at the level I'm at now (enthusiastic beginner), this little tree is a good compromise between price and development. It's further advanced than my other trees, but I don't feel 'over-horsed' by it, I'm not afraid to touch it or prune it or style it.

Keep your fingers crossed for us both, and I'll be sure to share updates with you soon.

Do you have any thoughts on this dilemma? Let me know in the comments :)
Love
PB xx

Bonsai - Let's begin with my trees - #1 Picea albies

"If you want to practice Bonsai, you need a lot of trees"

I can't remember which of my Bonsai guru's imparted that gem of knowledge, but it's certainly true. Once you've done a piece of work on a tree, you must let it recover, if you have only one tree, then that's a long wait until the next job can be done. You can't build skills and confidence like that.

In the few short months since I decided to reconnect with Bonsai I've amassed a small collection of trees and shrubs, spanning deciduous, evergreen, flowering, fruiting, hardy, tender, tropical. Hopefully that will give me a range of jobs I can do throughout the year. Here's what I have (so far!) ...

I had a Japanese Maple too...but I killed it #sadface

So you can see (maybe, if you zoom in!) that I have 18 trees right now, and knowing how 'invested' I get in hobbies, I expect that number to grow.

"You have to kill a lot of trees to make a few decent ones"

I can't remember who said this either, but I know I've killed quite a few trees in my time, mainly through a lack of learning during my teens.

Let me start to introduce you formally to my trees...

Picea abies (Norway Spruce)

I bought this for about £5.00 in early January, it was left over after Christmas.

A leftover Christmas Tree - Picea abies (Norway Spruce)

My first important job was to get this little tree out of it's bucket. It was planted straight in it, and there were no drainage holes. I was certain that the roots would be poorly formed, as a) the mass production of these trees means that time is money, and b) the non draining pot could have caused the roots to avoid filling any the sodden areas.

Left - Before root pruning      and Right - After!

I was right! The roots were a disaster. The tree had clearly been pushed down into the compost, causing the roots to be forced upwards, and to wrap around the neck of the trunk. Roots had then formed at the top of the trunk, immediately below the branches (left hand photo). 

I decided there were no kind ways of working on this root system, so clipped off the high up roots, all the upwards growing roots, the tightly wrapped ones and the overly thick ones (right hand photo). That operation also removed most of the fine roots too.

There were a large number of branches growing from the same points on the trunk, so I thinned them out, but left the remaining branches unpruned, so the tree had some foliage to aid recovery and healing.

Post-pruning and repotted.

Now this isn't a styling - this is damage limitation. Too many branches coming from one trunk location, moving resources to and from the foliage can cause the collars (where the branches meet the trunk) to swell together, and overly thicken the junction. When this area gets to the point where it is wider than the rest of the trunk (nb it can happen on branches too), it is referred to as inverse taper and becomes a fault that is hard/impossible to recover from.

After this initial work, I'll leave this tree well alone and see how it responds. You can see in the final photo (above), repotted it in approx. 75% Akadama (granular clay-like material used widely for bonsai), I've indicated a potential front for the tree (white pointy piece of plastic), and I've had to stabilise the tree with crocks on the soil surface, otherwise it was just falling over - not surprising really, now it has so few roots.

I've got the tree in an unheated greenhouse to protect it from cold, frost, snow and wind, and when I start to see signs of growth, I'll begin feeding this little Spruce with omakase japanese bonsai feed pellets.

Right! 1 down, 17 more trees to go!
See you soon
PB xx

Returning to my Gardening Roots with Bonsai

My garden path is a wiggly one

My mother was very protective of her garden, when I was young, she would try to let me 'have' bits in an attempt to nurture a love of gardening in me, but things took too long to grow from seed, I never remembered to water, weeds took over, and before I knew it, my area had been assimilated back into Mother's garden.

I liked making mud pies next to the dustbin :)

In 1988 at the tender age of 14, I was flicking through a copy of my mother's Amateur Gardener magazine, and saw an article written by someone called Clive Jones. The photo accompanying the article was a tree...and it was in a little ceramic pot.

This is the very first Bonsai article I ever read, it's probably an antique now!

BONSAI!

Imagination captured!

After that, I scoured Mother's garden magazine collection for more information and articles. The author of the articles then changed to a gentleman called Peter Chan, a Bonsai artist living in Surrey, with his own Bonsai nursery called Herons. Mother didn't need much persuading to arrange a family day out, so on a sunny summer's day we went.

Peter Chan wrote in a different manner to Clive

I was star-struck by Peter, and tried asking him a question, but I don't think he took me very seriously.
My dad and I were completely captivated by the glorious forest plantings on Peter's display benches, and at the end of my visit I bought two little Swamp Cypress starter trees in 3" pots.

My 1st Collection

Back then, we didn't have much money, so alongside my two Swamp Cypress, I had a fuchsia, a couple of little seedlings from the garden, a pyracantha, and occasional evergreens, which I would get overly ambitious with...and kill...very quickly (I gave up on evergreens after a while!). I did have a Scots Pine in a big bucket as well. I loved poring over Bonsai catalogues, and would send off for price lists. In those days catalogues were mainly typed lists of plants and descriptions, so you were very much buying blind.

Bonsai Nursery catalogues from the late 1980's

Learning about Bonsai in the 80's

I wasn't terribly interested in learning as a teen (I was doing enough of that at school), so I would grasp a couple of concepts and cling to them. Such as;

to thicken a tree's trunk, grow it in a standard plant pot rather than a bonsai pot.

Perfect! I'm creating Bonsai!

I had some nice Bonsai books, one was a school prize for attainment, but in all honesty I was afraid to prune anything off my trees for fear of ruining them, didn't understand how often to tend or feed them, or that I should be tailoring their soil to their individual needs, I just used whatever compost Mother had, or I'd take soil straight from the garden.

Somehow I kept my trees going for about 4 years until I went to Art College, started a part time job and discovered night clubs! Sadly my little trees couldn't survive this deep neglect (even though Mother was watering them for me), and one by one they died.

If you read my page How I came to Gardening you'll see I have now found space in my life for many aspects of gardening, and I've documented my growth in knowledge and achievement here in this blog as well as on my YouTube channel. I'm also enjoying the actual act of learning far more than I did back then, especially as it's just for me, I don't have to prove anything to anyone, or take exams or anything.

Fast forward to Autumn 2017

As research for my own YouTube channel, I'd been seriously exploring the garden-based YouTubers to see what sort on content I could create; I had my garden itself, my carnivorous plants and my succulents. Then I stumbled on some amazing Bonsai videos, and quickly realised that things had moved on an awful lot in the world of Bonsai since my last attempts, and long-held techniques were being discarded. Being able to watch a current Bonsai artist, amateur or professional, assess their trees in real time, make decisions, prune, wire and repot trees was an absolute revelation It occurred to me that now might be the perfect time to go back to where I began my journey, back to Bonsai.

My Favourite Bonsai YouTubers:

YouTube is a huge source of information, but for truly educational Bonsai videos - I would highly recommend searching for Nigel Saunders The Bonzai Zone, Graham Potter at Kaizen Bonsai and Ryan Neil at Bonsai Mirai.

• Nigel is based in Ontario, Canada, and enjoys 'cut and grow' Bonsai techniques, has lots of trees in his collection from all different climates, of different ages, and stages of development. His plethora of videos are gentle, calm, informative, friendly and he takes you carefully through the pros and cons of each decision he makes for his trees. He breaks the videos into libraries, so it's easy to search for species or techniques. Nigel also takes you for walks around his local area, to study the natural shapes and quirks of different trees as they grow out in the landscape.
• Kaizen Bonsai is in Norfolk, UK. Owned by Graham Potter who seems to get much joy creating sculptural deadwood on pines and conifers, he also has a good quantity of videos for inspiration, though most of his work seems way beyond anything I could ever hope to approximate. He is very good at demonstrating confident use of power tools on deadwood.
• Bonsai Mirai has free content on YouTube and their website, then if you want to learn even more, you can subscribe to their live streams. There are 3 tiers of subscription, I've recently signed up to Tier 2. Ryan Neil is a Bonsai professional who trained for 6 years under Mr Masahiko Kimura in Japan. He doesn't just look at styling and design, but gives you complex horticultural knowledge that you didn't realise you needed to know, but gives you a real *lightbulb* moment on your own successes and failures. Bonsai Mirai is based in Oregon, USA.

These three channels together provide a perfect balance for me to learn from, each with their own speciality and way of imparting information - watch Nigel's Lara Croft video and tell me you weren't totally absorbed by it!

Peter Chan also has a number of videos on his website and YouTube, his Bonsai skills are undeniable, but personally I find his demonstrations too fast to be able to learn anything meaningful from.

So here I go again

There is a Chinese proverb...

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

If I'd been able to keep my first trees they'd be about 33 years old now, but I must not lament their passing, just remember that they taught me many lessons, and that I am now ready to begin my journey over again. My trees and videos will reflect my skill level - enthusiastic beginner! I can promise you no more than that, but it would be nice to think I might inspire someone else to try their hand at this beautiful art form.

Love PB xx