If you stop by here from time to time and listen to my dribblings you will be familiar with the fact we are always busy. It has been said that I have the best job in the world, mucking about with bonsai all day and getting paid. ANYONE who runs a business in the UK will know that ain’t the case. In summer I spend a lot of time watering and pruning in a topiary kind of way and in spring I typically re-pot around four hundred and fifty trees. However finding the time to actually create bonsai from our hundreds of yamadori trees or properly prune and refine mature bonsai almost never happens any more. Being successful is always a double edged sword and as much as I love edged weapons of all kinds, ending up on the sharp side of one was never in my dreams as a young boy and yes, I was a boy once, a long long time ago.

Last week was the first quiet week we have had in 2017. Orders were all simple and quickly despatched which freed us up to go do some bonsai “which was nice”. I buy a lot of what I believe is nice material. Sadly often times folk can’t see the bonsai tree for the wood and so, in order to keep stock moving, I have to get the ball rolling. Even after all these years it never ceases to amaze me how an hour spent carving and wiring will transform a grizzly stump into something half presentable. Here are a few of our projects……..

G.

Hornbeam, carpinus betulus, a beautiful British native but a tough challenge.

Early days but everyone is always banging on about getting smaller trees. Small enough?

5 years on the nursery and not a sniff. Seriously, what’s not to love?

Again early days and scope for refinement but it got dark 😉

Another of those hornbeam stumps.

British native trees work up well.

Siberian maple that was about twice the size before I clipped it out.

Massive evergreen oak with tiny leaf. Two years from collecting in Spain.

Garden sabina juniper. I did the deadwood on behalf of the previous owner.

Ramon did the wiring and most of the styling. A little sand blasting and a tweak here and there. Who said garden junipers are no good?