With Christmas madness about to descend upon us all I guess it’s that time of year when tossers like me who conceitedly write blogs have to take stock of the year all but passed. 2024 was a year of milestones and some bonsai videos too. Growing up my family weren’t ones for making a fuss, birthdays, Christmas etc’ would come and go with relatively little fanfare. So forgive me for not being overly effusive but it seems appropriate to at least mention a few significant milestones that both I and we here at KB passed over the last year.
I have never been one for celebrations but seeing as I passed the grand old age of 60 in September I thought it would be nice for once to stage a celebration with my besties. However by the time the day arrived I had scaled back my plans to virtually nothing and so mostly the family got together for the evening and that was pretty much that. My first birthday celebration since I was a kid!
Another big mile stone that went by without a thought was the 20th anniversary of my full time employment by Kaizen Bonsai. YES it’s now more than 20 years since we bought Colin Lewis’s Bonsai Mart and dear God has that been an experience. Looking on the bright side we are still here, just about. Hanging on by the skin of what few teeth I have left thanks to the British, so called, ‘government‘ rogering us with a toilet brush every time we try to do something. Back when we started it was so much easier but nowadays the price of everything makes my eyes water and the margins are just too small. I’m committed now so we have to carry on but if you were to ask me, as is traditional at these moments of reflection, if I would do it all again my reply would be “Absolutely not!”.
What would I have done 20 years ago assuming I knew then what I know now? Think Budd (Michael Madsen) from the film Kill Bill. My ideal life would be just that, less the ignominious end of course. I now know all I need is a shitty trailer home in the desert, a pickup truck and a Harley shovelhead, possibly a little dog with attitude and a shitty job. My sister went to the US back in her teens and never came back, it broke my mothers heart and I just couldn’t follow her but there’s rarely a day I don’t wish I had.
2024 was also the year I lost my mother-in-law, the mother of my first lady who I lost to the big-C thirty years ago. Whilst we were never close, she was a unique sort of person, her passing reunited me with Tina’s brother who I had not seen for decades. Shane’s reappearance has been a fantastic and enriching experience for the whole family, it’s like those intervening years never happened. This whole business and a funeral bought back some very powerful memories for me and what we had to endure back then and that’s all I have to say about that.
I have been exceptionally blessed this year to have acquired several large bonsai collections. Once upon a time these would have come and gone within weeks. However now that the movement of trees is more difficult than moving cocaine or illegals around I keep everything I get. For decades now every time a tree started to look good it was sold. As a result I have been denied the joy of seeing my bonsai develop and mature. Thankfully now that’s not the case and I’m able to make plans and develop my lovely bonsai without being concerned they might disappear at any moment. As it turns out I do have some skill and the trees are making sterling progress.
I was particularly excited to obtain the collection of Harry Nicholl. A stalwart of the Scottish bonsai scene for many decades. We met at a shitty motorway services on the A1 in the depth of winter and loaded his beautiful trees into my van. Whilst I only spent a half hour with Harry (in his eighties) I took to him instantly, what a lovely man. Imagine my horror when three months later I learned he had passed quite suddenly. I had been so looking forward to telephone conversations about the stories and techniques behind those trees. I don’t take to most people, folk scare the shit out of me and because I lack almost any social skills i’m best on my own. To meet a gentleman like Harry and instantly take to him, for me, never happens and I’m so sad he’s gone but I love his trees that I will cherish for the rest of my days.
Talking of being social…. This year I was equally pleased and apprehensive to be involved in Peter Chan’s Bonsai Journeys event in September. Were it not for Kevin Willson’s intervention I would NEVER have done something like that. In the end I had a great weekend, met some interesting folk and came away with a little more understanding of how you lovely folk appreciate what I do. It’s a bit odd to be held in high esteem by so many people and something i’m just not really aware of seeing as I don’t go out much these days so, thank you all so much and please, don’t be afraid to send me compliments at any time. Also please do pick up the phone once in a while, apparently it’s good to talk.
Other notable events in the last year include a second grand-baby Eveline (no 3 is in the oven). My 29th anniversary married to Catherine without whom I would be utterly useless. My parents 65 odd anniversary and its been 25 years since I first started working with Kevin Willson. Then just for good measure I lost a bunch of weight which has been utterly miserable and continues. Sadly something had to be done, too many good men have been lost in my life these last few years which makes you think. ALSO I was having trouble riding my sportier bikes so the gut just had to go. I’m much more interested in crafting the perfect high speed cornering manoeuvre than I am eating or drinking. Trouble is I’m still wearing all the same clothes so I look like a sack of shit tied up scruffy most of the time.
2024 presented bonsai growers with a shitstorm of weather, at least it did on the east coast. Hand on heart we did not have a warm day here until the latter part of June. I spent less time watering between April and July than I did over last winter. In 35 years I have never known such a piss poor summer. My maples were so late many only finally let their leaves go in the last three weeks. Some trees loved it though, i have never seen so much growth on larch, juniper, spruce and mugo pines. Those mountain trees really don’t like heat so they were right at home in the wind-cut chilled expanse of my Norfolk garden. Bike riding was also seriously curtailed and i’m still not over that.
BOF the shovel. All I need for my mental health therapy. Fucking broke down and was off the road for most of the summer. Now all fixed 🙂
September 2024 also saw the launch of our new web site. This whole e-commerce business is a PITA. There are so many rules and regulations these days and of course staying up with all the latest trends, giving customers so many options, payment channels, functionality and security across so many platforms/devices just never seems to end. This latest iteration is by far our best, it took nigh on two years to achieve and costs a shit load of money both to create and run. For all this I have to thank Sarah who you don’t know, she’s the absolute foundation of KB and without her we would be gone.
Like a good few of our customers I look longingly back at those days 20 years ago when I spent July and August compiling our paper catalogue. November was always a throwback to my printing days when we spent the month addressing and stuffing envelopes with crisp fresh glossy print and the whole house smelt of ink and paper. Unlike our first web sites, those paper catalogues still bring in orders. It must be close to fifteen years since I last mailed out a catalogue but some folk are STILL ordering from them.
20 years! Where did that go?
Sadly my annual Christmas holiday break will be interrupted this year thanks to the arrival of several ton’s of bonsai pots this week. These will all need to go onto the website pronto as so many canny folk are getting their spring supplies in early. For the first time I am aware of in the UK we have supplies of BIG high quality glazed pots up to 27″ in a multitude of styles, shapes and colours. We also have hundreds of exceptional exhibition quality shohin pots never seen before. This will appear alongside our extensive range of quality Japanese glazed and unglazed pots now all fully restocked. If I had to guess we probably have 7-800 pot options available and about 15-18 tons of stock.
Lots of big glazed pots available from stock. They’re NOT all just blue or green but that’s what I had to hand.
We have also had shipments of all varieties of bonsai tools, carving tools and 2 tons of Japanese fertilisers like Biogold etc’. There’s over 50 tons of soil products and two tons of wire so whatever you are likely to need chances are we have it in stock right here. It’s safe to say I have never held so much stock of everything but that’s just how this business has to operate these days. Gone are the days when we could pop over to a wholesaler and buy a few odds-n-ends.
And finally I thought I would bend to the endless cries of my adoring supporters. It’s new video time folk (bottom of the page) and this time I have made a throwback to those heady days over 15 years ago when, largely for the first time Youtube got to show proper bonsai in the making. Yes! We have made another Crappy Taxus video. I really didn’t want to spend a week (on and off) in mid-winter doing a tree like this. These days the call of an open fire, the Chesterfield, a very large JD (or 2,3,4) and slippers is strong during these long dark days. However it turned out okay and i’m very pleased I did get off my ass. I managed 9 videos this year which is the best for a long time. If there’s something you think I need to cover in a future edition I would like to hear from you though I can’t promise anything.
For next year Kevin’s been stitching me up again so now I have to make another public appearance at the newly planned Bonsai Fest in Newark or some such next March I believe. I’m looking forward to that, and not, in equal measure but for now I have to go and move this mountain of pots.
Sam, Kevin, Myself & Mr Fest’ Booty.
So, all told, election results not withstanding, 2024 has been one for the books. Not everything went to plan but I didn’t fall off a bike, loose any good bonsai, go broke or die so I recon that makes it a good one even if the summers tan has long gone. I’m happy, the family’s good and business is sound, BOF the shovel is now working 100% and ready for next summer and my benches are full and as we say around here “At least we don’t have bombs falling on the roof” for now at least.
I sincerely hope you have had a good year on balance. The world’s a crazy place right now but even so we have a lot to be thankful for and those little trees work hard at keeping many of us on the right side of sane. From all of us here at Kaizen Bonsai we wish you a very merry and hospitable Christmas and lets all just chill the fuck out and get along.
The Summer That Was (not) & Upcoming Bonsai Projects
It NEVER ceases to amaze me how you lovely folk are (generally) so impressed with with my silly little blog. I was humbled during my recent visit to Peter Chan’s to receive so many comments on how my dear readers just love to peruse my ranting bullshit.
This all started about 1998/9 when I took on the newsletter at our local bonsai club. Back then I didn’t know shit about shit as far as bonsai was concerned but, having got my little Bondi blue Imac hooked up to the interweb via a telephone modem I figured I could do my research and compile enough, what we now call ‘content’ to fill a page or two every month.
I got one of these and just started typing drivel.
And this was the result. Endless pages of bullshit……or was it?
Of course being an old gas-bag that quickly turned into an intimidating four pages of closely spaced text. These days I doubt most folk would have the attention span to read that much. Over a few years I wrote more than a quarter million words, I still have all the copies. The newsletter got so popular I was mailing hard copies to as far away as Australia. I remember one of our members picked up his newsletter and said to me he had strict instructions from his good lady to return with a copy or don’t come home. Apparently as soon as it was in her hands she would retire for the evening to read the whole damn thing. She had no interest in bonsai by all accounts.
I have always loved words. My second best subject at school was English. My lovely old mum has always been a voracious reader though I have not, she did instil in me a love of our magnificent language. Whilst I do not have a particular grip of all the technicalities it seems I do have a knack of making my subject clear and interesting.
Taking a complex and nuanced subject like bonsai and presenting it in a way that cuts through the hazy mists of confusion, to a point where just about anyone can get it, takes a very specific type of simple bloke to achieve i.e yours truly…..me, an uneducated knucklehead with a finely tuned bullshit radar. IMHO the modern world is so deep in slurry, in the agricultural sense, to be clear piss and shit soup it’s often hard for any of us to make sense of even the simplest of subjects. We’re up to our chins folk!
As a simple country boy I know what shit looks like and I have a finely tuned ability to see right through it much of the time. Being an old cynic helps a lot I feel. I’m not here trying to sell y’all anything, i’m not promoting products (most of the time), no sponsored ads, products or clickbait, i’m not trying to be popular, get the likes, clicks or subscribers. I write this for my own ‘mental health‘ and to bring clarity to my simple life and place in a crazy world. That’s why my ‘content’ is free, I never made a penny from this blog or any of the other stuff online. That’s what the Kaizen Bonsai store is for, buy that stuff and I can then be free to write shit and make daft video.
This weekend the clocks went back, sadly only an hour. How much better would it be if we could turn those clocks back to about 1960. Whilst i was not quite there (-4) I can be sure that the world was a better place and I feel I would like the people and their attitudes a whole lot more than I do today. I don’t have a single person I can call a friend that was born after about 1975. Now I know the past, in fact all of human history, was far from perfect but todays utter insanity gives me a significant sense of unease.
We’re (GB) circling the plughole and my advice would be to start making plans to leave now or be prepared to fight to protect your own. Loose weight, get fit and get busy folk, in the words of Eddie Abbew (look him up)”Wake the fuck up!” but then what do I know I haven’t been out the front gate for a week. These days screens largely bring me nothing but bad news, lots of which is utter bullshit and it’s very hard for a fellow to stay on an even keel. It’s got so bad I can hardly be bothered to rant and rave at the TV any more. How sad is that folk?
So, having got that off my chest I actually came here to present what I might call a review of my bonsai summer or, to be precise the lack of it. The Summer That Was (not) & Upcoming Bonsai Projects. I know it’s actually autumn, I intended to write this in September but I had a massive hangover and just couldn’t be assed but at least now I know we won’t be having and Indian summer whatever one of those is.
I live out on the east coast, the sea is two miles east of me. Norfolk sticks out into the cold north sea and so our spring time will always be that bit later than it will for those living a little further inland. For instance Norwich is just 25 minutes drive directly west and in summer the temperatures are typically 5-7 degrees warmer than here. Come a warm sunny day in spring those folk flock to our broad golden sandy beaches but, typically they get out of their cars before promptly turning around to leave because it’s so fricking cold.
However in winter it works the other way around. Years ago I was inland pike fishing on a dark cold autumn night. Soon the temperature dropped below freezing and line started to stick to my rod and everything was going white. I packed up and came home, just 12 miles and here it was 5 degrees above. Nearly 10 degrees difference in such a short distance.
So come spring time for most everyone else we’ll still be in the grip of winter cold, spring cold or even summer cold. We are subject to northerly winds right off the sea and even August can see us endure a cold snap sufficient to find my sparking up the fire to keep warm of an evening. I know it’s hard to believe for ‘inlanders’ but the first warm day of summer 2024 occurred here on June 22/23. Sure there were plenty of sunny days but those were even colder. We missed spring entirely this year and just went straight to summer but I can’t really call it that.
The pursuit of bonsai, particularly in Blighty is all about the weather simply because half the year is too cold for growth on average and when May was as cold as February, which happened here this year, even the better half of the year might not produce appropriate conditions. I can, hand on heart, say that 2024 has provided only about 7 weeks of growth potential and even that consisted of a few good days here and there. As a result most of my bonsai have achieved virtually nothing. In 35 years of fanatical bonsai activity this year has quite simply been the worst I can remember. However….
My garden, by design, creates a harsh exposed environment for bonsai. I keep most of my trees in direct sunlight and exposed to wind and everything else the weather can throw at us. That makes for strong compact and characterful growth which in time creates impressive bonsai, it takes a bit of time but I can typically use everything I grow in the development of my trees. I do have shady spots which are useful in some circumstances. As a result I do very well with trees that like my moderately harsh conditions. I do well with olives and other Mediterranean species as well as most varieties of pine, yew and Japanese maples are typically pretty good. Junipers and most non-native varieties are unreliable at best.
The weather here is largely consistent in its inconsistency however after twenty years experience (in this garden) I can manipulate my conditions to provide what most plants need…. more or less. As a result I do get fairly consistent results year to year. However this year has produced some very unexpected and, as it turns out, very welcome results I was not expecting and have not seen before. Having been very cold on average and with high rainfall and extreme cold northeasterly winds for the period from February until late June most of my trees reluctantly came into leaf and then stopped altogether and produced nothing further. But, to my great surprise, what I term high mountain trees have actually done exceptionally well. I include in that list larch, junipers, spruce, scots pine and mugo pine. All those have produced record results this year, some in excess of anything I have ever seen before. I guess our favoured long hot summer days are not suited to everything after all.
The thing I love most about bonsai is that every day there is something new to learn. Every passing year is a reminder of how little I know and every day’s a school day. Next year I’ll be moving a few of those high mountain trees into different positions because I now know a great deal more about their favoured growing conditions than I did before. I ought to know this, I have been very lucky to go to the places a lot of these beautiful varieties naturally inhabit but it’s easy to forget the role of altitude in providing the conditions a plant might like.
So, on balance this summer was a write off for several tree species whilst others have excelled. Looking for the silver lining I learned something very valuable and have certainly seen dramatic improvement in some varieties with which I often struggle. In reality most years are like that, up and down, winners and losers. Talking of which I have a potentially exciting project in the pipeline. A story over thirty years in the making, an emotional rollercoaster ride for me and one that takes me right back to my very first days working with bonsai. Anyone remember this yew?
The Plucking Yew around 2008 just before it all went horribly wrong.
Collected around 1995 I had no expectation the tree would even live. I literally had no clue what I was doing, it even took me a while to figure out which end went in the soil. However despite my best efforts the tree survived and went on to thrive. By the time it was ready for first work I had met my now long term friend and mentor Kevin Willson who in conjunction with this tree and a few very long days work transformed not only the tree but my entire life, for ever. After that long weekend nothing was ever the same again.
As collected around the mid 1990s.
Right after the first work/styling around 1998/9
The yew went on to be selected for the Ginkgo awards in the early 2000s. For me that was a great moment. To get a tree I dragged out of the woods on a damp autumn day accepted for what was the best assemblage of European bonsai ever seen at the time was a truly special moment. After that he appeared at many European and British shows including commendation at the fabled Noelanders Trophy.
So, where has the tree been since then? We’ll get to more of this in the future but basically having moved house in 2008 and with a burgeoning bonsai business on my hands whilst still working as a landscaper and travelling commitments life got much too busy and I took advantage of my supremely vigorous yew by totally ignoring it for years. By the time I got back to it the strength had gone and drastic measures were required. This resulted in the tree ending up in a corner of the garden I used to call the dead-pile. It lost all it’s roots and 90% of the branches after I poisoned it with compost infected with a fungal pathogen (don’t ask). As far as I was concerned that was the end of the story. I sold the beautiful pots the tree had inhabited and chalked it all up to the price of an education.
As they say, “Lessons cost, good ones cost a lot!”
The ‘Plucking Yew’ or “ *ucking yew’ as it became known, once again refused to lie down, despite my best efforts, and it survived. I chucked it into the nettle patch behind my pond where it sat, surrounded by three foot weeds for several years where I neither fed or watered it. Some roots got into the ground and gradually it came back to life. Eventually I noticed it’s progress and started to take better care.
Kevin was well acquainted with my miserable failure and being eagle eyed, kept trying to buy it off me, much like he did when I first rocked up at Oxley Hill with it. I may have done a stupid thing but that does not make me stupid and I didn’t sell it. Two years ago in August I took the tree back into the workshop and 100% bare rooted it. There’s no way I was going to restore the tree and then run into repotting/root issues. My ethos has always been ‘roots first’. There was soil coming out of there I hadn’t seen since the 1990s.
In the end this has all paid off. The tree now has the vigour and strength it did 25 years ago and so the next step? Well, following on from the success of last years joint venture with the big scots our next project will be this yew. For me an emotional moment going right back to where it all started nigh on thirty years ago with my favourite tree and my raffish mate from Essex. We thought it high time we revisited this tree whilst we’re both still compos mentis, time’s passing fast for us old geezers. This should be happening sometime in the next few weeks. Not too sure if ya’ll would like to see a video? Let me know.
So, summer was not so great, but then it had a few surprises too. Living in Blighty we learn to roll with the punches and make the most of what we got. There’s always next year assuming Starmergeddon hasn’t done us all down by then.
There’s other stuff going on right now too with some fresh imports of special pots and other great bonsai products new to the UK. Stay tuned folk and stay in touch, it’s always a delight to hear from you!
Graham.
My old friend hale and hearty once again
Much has changed but much remains and so it goes.
That’s what a healthy taxus looks like. It’s all in the roots folk!
Back in the day I grew ever branch from a bud and now look.
I have to say I was somewhat uncomfortable dragging my old ass and a van load of trees down to Herons last weekend. I rarely leave home these days and once I get outside my little part of Norfolk & north Suffolk I get the jitters. Being on the M25 sees me break out in hives. Still, in a moment of weakness I promised to support Kevin Willson who pulled us all together for the event. It seemed like a good idea months ago but less so as the day arrived but i’m not one to let a brother down.
Despite my innate fear of large groups it was my job to tough it out and do my utmost to be friendly and sociable. I’m so out of my depth at these kind of things it’s painful. But everyone pulled together and put on a fantastic event that was sold out. The aim was to raise £5k for charity which i’m pleased to say we did. To the best of my knowledge I avoided pissing anyone off and so I guess the weekend was a great success.
I have to thank Peter, Kevin and all the crew at Herons for all their hard work. Also my fellow exhibitors who turned out some beautiful bonsai trees and a fine display. Whilst it may have been small it was exceptional in quality and the best I have seen in the UK. Once I got over myself it turned out to be a very memorable weekend. You’ll find lots more about the event on socials i’m sure. I didn’t take a single photo, i just forgot so here are some I trawled off FB. If any of these are your photos and you would like a credit please post a comment.
Ipswich Bonsai Society Demonstration.
It’s now Wednesday and my head has finally cleared. Bonsai folk are champion drinkers 😉 It’s now time to start getting ready for my next trip, this time just down the road to Ipswich, well within my comfort zone.
This Friday evening I have a demonstration at Ipswich Bonsai Society. I’ll be discussing the process of building bonsai trees, in particular scots pines. The focus will be on the long term work required to build a bonsai tree from raw material. Most folk rely on wire to keep their scots looking good but it’s entirely possible to create a densely ramified and self supporting tree over time providing we understand the process and plan it all out well in advance. So if pines leave you scratching your head in bewilderment might I suggest ya’ll come along and hopefully I can explain. I know this friendly bunch of folk will be thrilled to see new faces.
Graham.
Setting up Friday evening.
A simple set up but a monumental effort all around.
White pine by Martin Pym
Japanese taxus by Lee Fincham
JBP by Barry Gatt
Juniper by Caz
Scots from Warren Radford
Trust me to muck it all up by taking a tree way too big.
Blackthorn by Steve Mckee
Taxus by Richard Chambers.
Sorry looking scots is the victim of too many bad choices in the past. Time to get it back on track.
First up let me apologise for the lack of posts recently. Summer’s a funny time here for many reasons and this one has been unusually funny (not) for all the wrong reasons. My trees started off the year raring to go and by end of February buds were breaking left and right. Then by the time we got to May (which is our most significant period of activity in the growing of bonsai here on the east coast) the temperatures were colder than February and we didn’t see blue sky for weeks whilst enduring biting northeasterly winds right off the cold North sea that tore the skin off anything daft enough to assume it was actually time to start growing. It was actually mid-June before we experienced a warm day here…..honestly.
In 35+ years of growing bonsai this summer has been the absolute worst I can remember. I have a big magnolia outside my window and it flowers faithfully every April. This year the wind tore it to shreds and now here we are in September and it’s covered in flowers. The wisteria growing up the back garden wall flowered in August whilst Satsuki azaleas were flowering in April. The last month has been alternatively hot with vicious drying winds one day and cold the next and no rain for weeks. Catherine had the heating on at the beginning of the month.
As a result all my carefully laid plans for the season have gone to shit…. much like the rest of the country but don’t get me started on that. However some trees have responded very positively to low temperatures and very little sun. I have rarely seen so much growth on my junipers. Larch also have been simply outstanding. Most high mountain species have been really good, maples have been average but most others have been lacklustre at best. It’s been necessary to change a lot of the care regimen we use for our bonsai this year in order to help the struggling pants do what little they could.
I am often asked what’s my favourite species for bonsai? That’s an easy one….. scots pine. Were I limited to one species or one tree that’s what it would be. Nothing in life is more reliable than a scots pine and if that’s all that were in my collection I would still be a happy man.
Regular visitors here will remember the little pine I worked with Kevin Willson last year. In case you missed it see….
We worked this old scots last October for the first time. Apart from my TLC and a serious re-pot in 2019 nothing was done in a styling context. It’s my conviction that success in bonsai is all about patient preparation and here is the proof.
This coming weekend I have been asked by Peter Chan to exhibit a tree at Herons Bonsai. Something of a milestone for me as I remember visiting Peter’s nursery the thick end of 40 years ago as a spotty clueless youth with my pockets turned out. To be asked to join a stellar cast of other talented bonsai folk from around the UK in presenting a few decent trees for me is a bit special.
I was invited to Herons last year. I knew I had arrived when at 2am after a long evening of excess I was to be found in the kitchen of Peter’s guest house drinking strong coffee whilst Kevin made hot buttered toast for us both. Funny the things that you remember!
So I am not too sure what’s going on this weekend but I will be there with me ol’ scots. I’m sure if you contact Herons they will fill you in with the details. Kevin and I got together and gave the tree a little polish recently and I have to say, despite the weather and some ham fisted work on my part the tree is looking pretty good, especially considering this is ‘first work’. It’s entirely likely this tree is several hundred years old but has the strength and vigour of a seedling. If only I could say the same! Now, where’s my Hawaiian shirt 🙂
G.
Scots pine September 2024 ready for the show bench.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge of life since I purchased my first bonsai, a serissa, to stand on the side of my little koi pond. On occasions I ruminate over all that time passed, about thirty five years I guess. The trees that came and went, the stupid ideas I grew out of, the bonsai I made, the trees I killed, the people I have met, journeys undertaken, the friends I made and some I have sadly lost. I have reached an age where I have more to look back upon than I have going forward. I have aged parents, grand-babies, everything is paid for and so I guess life is good so long as I focus on the positives which is hard for me.
I got a slow start in life. I remember my school teachers telling my parents ‘Graham is sharp as a whip but he just will not apply himself‘. Every school report noted ‘Can do better!’ ‘Must try harder‘ or some such. I unofficially left school at 15, I figured out how to register my attendance then bunk off for the remainder of the day. Nobody noticed I was missing. I just turned up for woodwork and test days, the rest of the time I was AWOL. Nobody at school, except my woodwork teacher, managed to get through to me exactly what i was doing there. I just could not see the point.
When I officially left school at 16 I had nothing to do and nowhere to go. I didn’t know how to get a job or even what jobs there were to do. I did a bit of part time (floor) cleaning at a store and spent my time (more than three years) applying to be a postie because it looked like an easy job to me. On my own, walking the streets, poking mail into doors, how hard can that be? They never even wrote me back….or maybe the letter got lost 😉
So, age 17 I spent my last £150 savings and put it into a part share of an old printing press. I spent a year learning to work the beast and the rest is history, I spent 21 years full time in the printing trade. Eventually that got in the way of my bonsai and so the stark choice was to stay put in a cushty job with decent pay and good security or launch myself into thin air. Against all advice and with every nerve screaming at me to stop I walked out of my job into nothing. Long story short, thanks to all the lovely people in the bonsai community I did not loose everything, we didn’t starve, we’re still here. Thank you all so much, my little family is eternally grateful.
Don’t…….DON’T, for a moment think it was easy. At times the pressure and stress was so great I thought I was going to have a stroke or something and I know about that having been hospitalised for life threatening problems related to work stress. At times I have been close to running my bike into a tree. Just living in GB today, trying to make a living makes me feel that way. But now I am older I find myself focusing more on what’s right than what’s wrong.
Sure there is a lot wrong in society today and as we get older that seems much more threatening than when we were younger but, on the other hand there’s a lot to be thankful for. My glass may well have been half empty for most of my time here but at least it wasn’t empty right?
I have written many times about the value of spending quiet time with our trees. Back in the day I would often be found out in my garden at 2am. Over the past few years I got out of that habit because basically all I was doing was stacking up trees to sell, over 1500 trees were going through my hands annually and everything was for sale. Eventually I just lost my way in it all. Today, thankfully, things have changed for the better. I now no longer sell trees, or at least not many and thanks to the efforts of my close friends, not least of all Kevin W I am back doing bonsai and rediscovering what I lost.
These days I can be found out in my garden at first light, expresso in one hand and a small cigar in the other just looking, listening and feeling. The peace and quiet can be magical, nature is so expressive and engrossing if we can shut up long enough to hear. I’m sure this is news to no one but the things I am seeing and hearing are simply amazing. I have been insanely busy 24/7 for so many years but now I begin to realise a great deal of that pressure was self inflicted. Don’t worry, i’m not about to do something daft like take a vacation, after all everything I want in the world is right here at home but I do see a chance to stop and smell the roses.
Early mornings at first light can be magical!
This very (cold) morning I was outside at 5am accoutrement in hand and noticed this monster elm. I bought this in Southern Italy back in 2018. Back then it was in a massive tub nearly four feet wide. The previous owner had roughed it out and it arrived in my garden as can be seen in the image below.
Thankfully I never offered it for sale. Since then all I did was sort out the roots and pot it. Each summer I run over it with scissors a couple of times. My intention being to create enough material to justify a winter styling session. Largely I just ignore the old thing but maybe that’s not so bad right?
Field elm. April 2024.
As it arrived from Italy in late 2018.
My regular readers will be aware I have been gathering up a lot of very old British bonsai over the last year or so. Doing so has significantly changed my mind about a great deal of the ‘bonsai’ I was doing. Having so many trees that have been bonsai for many decades, many of which were created in ways different to those we take for granted today has left me questioning a lot of the things we “do“.
I have a very exacting standard and a high bar for what I personally consider to be ‘bonsai’. However, recently I have begun to realise the magic we seek is something that comes from a mixture of nature and time rather than just our skill, we need both on our side. For many years I have been of the opinion that a lot of bonsai we do should in fact not be ‘done‘ at all. I’m now beginning to realise we have to find the balance between making bonsai and letting ‘bonsai’ happen. This elm is a great illustration of that principle. Very often trees that are just left alone with the minimum of interference can develop into very special bonsai trees.
In the early days I was led to believe we could ‘age‘ a tree but that’s utter bollocks. Time ages a tree and on occasions something very special and unexpected can turn up seemingly by magic.
Going back to my more recent posts here, our particular lack of bonsai heritage and old British bonsai trees can’t help. For a start finding an old tree that’s been left to the passage of time is hard, most are either beyond help or deceased. The big issue is achieving the balance between doing enough to keep a tree happy and healthy but not doing so much that we spoil the enchantment passing time has left. Time can give bonsai a cloak of magic that we simply cannot make but we sure as hell can wreck.
This big old elm is very far from what I had intended to do and it’s far from being bonsai but I thought it was a good example of what can happen with the minimal amount of interference from me. It appears we often put too much pressure on ourselves for a multitude of reasons. Pressure can be a good thing but just as easily it can be destructive. I have put immense pressure on myself, my family and my bonsai for far too long to the detriment of all. Time to live life at a trees pace not our own, after all a decade to a tree is nothing.
Sadly that seems to be the story of our time and we are all the worse for it. Do more, get more, be more, go further, take it to the next level etc’ be dammed! I can’t believe I am saying this but perhaps it’s time to relax a little, take the pressure off and give our trees a break. You never know they just might teach us all something valuable right?
Creating bonsai takes a really long time. It also takes a long time to figure out exactly how to do it so if you are starting out TODAY assume it will take twenty years to figure out the basics, and that assumes you are busy and not applying yourself in a ‘working from home‘, civil service, tired hands kind of a way.
Having been hammering away at bonsai now for the better part of forty years I might be so bold as to say I figured this all out a while back. I often say it takes ten years to figure out which end goes into the soil. Now that’s not strictly true in a Trumpian kind of a way, it’s not to be taken literally, it’s a figure of speech which illustrates that even after a decade in the saddle one can still be susceptible to chafing. That’s another figure of speech isn’t it but illustrates my point I hope.
Sadly todays society has, by and large, lost the appreciation of things that take time unless that time can be charged for of course. A bottle of Private Collection Glenlivet 1949 74 Year Old will set you back about £35,000 whilst a bottle of Whyte & Mackay Blended Scotch Whisky from Asda comes in at a very reasonable £17.00. I don’t drink Scotch but i know folk who do and they would be very keen to point out the difference of which I would be largely oblivious.
The basics of these two bottles are much the same (a distilled spirit) but the fact is one got left in the shed for a really long time and to a connoisseur who is blessed with a sensitive palate the difference is night and day and quite possibly worth every penny. The single malt had time to develop it’s special unique character alone whilst the blended one was engineered to taste a certain way and always the same way. Long ago I worked as a printer when the use of chemicals was acceptable workplace behaviour and I burned away whatever sensitive tissues I had in my head, my nose has not really worked since and so my ability to taste at all is minimal and as a result I have literally ZERO appreciation of these fine things.
For sure I wouldn’t drink that cheap blended s**t. On the very rare occasion I have Scotch in the house it’s going to be a 15 year old Glenlivet (donations gladly accepted). To be honest my preference is for a single barrel Jack Daniels, donations of which, again, I would be very glad to receive. Leave that blended stuff to the kids getting hammered on a Friday night.
So in this respect I feel I am like a lot of bonsai folk I encounter in daily life. I appreciate, at some level, the difference between good and bad, i know the basics but beyond that i literally know nothing and have no comprehension of the finer points. What I call a good whisky is unlikely to ever touch the lips of a true aficionado who might well look down on my choice as ‘window cleaner’ or some such.
After a lifetime spent immersed in something so deeply and so fanatically it’s impossible not to develop one’s palate and appreciation but it’s far from guaranteed. I know lovely folk that have spent twenty years travelling the world, attending every top bonsai exhibition year after year who see the very best our world has to offer and getting to know all the right people but don’t have a worthy bonsai to their name or a single clue how to make one.
I guess that’s like racing drivers, you don’t have to know how to engineer a car to drive one. If you want to be at the top of the game there’s a lot you need to know about how your machine works, why it does what it does or not. That way you can relay information back to the man that actually knows how it works so he can make it better for you. That’s why racing cars are largely managed and supported by a team. It brings all the best elements together that can never be embodied by a single person and the net result is better.
Seems to me many folk have money, opportunity or both and so have these nice things but can lack the apparatus to genuinely understand and appreciate their true value whilst a lowly person lacking in means but with highly developed senses, acquired through long application looks on in horror at the flagrant waste of true value and lack of appreciation and understanding beyond some notion of smug pride, that ‘look at what i’ve got’ nose in the air notion. Remember Stanley and Pammy……
These days I don’t tend to leave home, i did an insane amount of windscreen time back in the day and unless i am on two wheels I tend to avoid all travelling and stay off the roads. I don’t drag my trees all over the place showing them off and I’m very particular who I let visit my garden. I have no interest in impressing anyone with my work until I myself am impressed and trust me I am very far from that level so I continue to work hard and carefully to improve my results every single day and if I get the time perhaps one day i just might make a good bonsai in much the same way a blind squirrel might find a nut.
Going back to my analogy of a motor racing team it has always struck me that working together is best. However finding someone I can work with has not been easy. Most bonsai folk, certainly those I might choose to work with are a very long way from me. Just nipping over to Milan to work with Salvatore or Marco is not entirely practical. I’m also what one might call a ‘rummun‘. Hard to get along with, opinionated, largely oblivious to the feelings of others and determined to do it my way. Finding anyone to work with therefore was always going to be a challenge but lucky for me I know a guy….
Thankfully that guy lives not too far away, about 40 minutes on a well sorted Shovelhead. On paper Kevin Willson and I should not get on, we should fight like a cat and a dog but somehow, after 25 years, turns out we can actually work together fairly well. Mutual respect goes a long way and as they say ‘two heads are better than one’. Considering our advanced age and history of ‘substance abuse‘ I might say that two ‘half heads‘ make one properly functioning one but that might be unfair on my buddy. Whatever, between us we can knock up a half decent tree when we combine our skills despite our differing ideas on how that actually happens.
I guess we all have bonsai trees that have spent decades on our benches. Some become special to us whilst some are just bulk in our collection. This scots pine was one such for me. It came here from Norway perhaps fifteen years ago. Surprisingly it survived and I even styled it and made a video of the process though that was never released. Ultimately I got bored with it. I tried to sell without success and in time it started to suffer a little from neglect. I just could not bring myself to love it and having spent so long looking at it, as it was, I had absolutely NO inspiration to do anything with it at all.
Sound familiar? You got one on your bench?
Nowadays I stopped selling trees like we did at one time and am just rediscovering my love of bonsai work. I really don’t want anything in my garden that’s not special. So this pine stuck in my craw, can’t sell it, too much heart to dump it and no inspiration to reinvent it. As they say I could not see the wood for the trees. So what to do?
I’m a firm believer in letting folk do what they are good at. I don’t do any book keeping, banking or accounting because I have absolutely no head for numbers, absolutely NO clue whatsoever so I leave that stuff to professionals as I do web site stuff and lots of other things. Now when it comes to reinventing a bonsai tree there is only ONE place to be and that’s 40 minutes up the Norfolk coast and so it was I dropped this pine off on my unsuspecting mate last autumn.
I can’t imagine anything worse than having to create a bonsai tree from another artists work for that very same artist. Especially when you know it’s all going to end up online for the world to see in glorious Technicolour. That’s pressure right there but thankfully my raffish mate has a cast iron work ethic, a thick skin and’s not really that bothered what the hell I think. But then I did tell him to do whatever he wanted with my long suffering scotty.
As anyone who has had a tree worked by Kev’ will know, chances are when you get it back it’ll be tipped up on it’s side. No1 item on the agenda is finding the best trunk line and inclination. After that it’s just the technicalities of how to get the branches in the right place and with a good trunk line that’s usually pretty easy. But, this tree has a problem, one I failed to deal with decades ago and now I have no choice but to bite the bullet.
Norwegian scots pine 2017. To date lots of work has been completed in getting this established and ready to work.
2017 Same tree after Rammon and I worked on it. Nothing then happened until 2023, other than a few weak branches dropping.
Now when I first got this tree it was recently collected and I vaguely remember it was a planted in a long thin wooden box that was about a foot square and four feet long. It had been growing in a crack and had a long V shaped rootball with a good couple of feet folded back on itself. The growth was pretty much non existent. Come August Rammon helped me get it out of the box with the intention of sorting out the roots but that long hard V shaped root ‘ball’ was rock solid and mostly composed of wood in the form of big thick roots. The only live root ends I could find were insufficient to fill a teaspoon. I was entirely disgusted with the whole affair and intended dropping it in the bin but Rammon was insistent we give it a chance and so we broke up the rootball as best we could, cut away a load of dead suff, shortened it all as much as seemed safe and stuck it in a plastic pot with all that ugly wood just squeezed into the rectangular pot corner to corner. Miraculously it survived obvs.
So, as soon as I got the restyled tree back for Kevin my heart sank because I could see there was no chance of potting it at the appropriate inclination. Come last weekend and with buds extending i decided to bite the bullet. I would not normally repot a newly styled tree and I certainly would not recommend it but over the years I learned a few things that make a difference and create possibilities where there was none. Sometimes we just have to pull on the big boy pants and step up. Back in the day I would have done this without thinking but nowadays I don’t kill trees because I learned the finer points and have ‘developed my palate’ somewhat.
In conclusion working together, with someone of weight and experience really is the only way to create special bonsai trees worthy of the title. However finding that person’s not easy and if you are lucky and find one in you life hang onto them for all you are worth. Just last week my one and only bike riding mate of fairly recent acquaintance dropped dead on the way to a football match. Never even made it into an ambulance and I am totally heartbroken to have lost such a lovely positive and special friend.
Keep it real folks! Who knows what is just around the corner.
Kevin had the tree tilted a little more. This is my compromise. Two Half Heads are Better Than One!
Masses of root and deadwood shoehorned into this pot. Beneath the surface is a solid block of wood literally hammered into the pot from corner to corner.
Corner to corner. There are several more like this directly beneath the surface and in both corners.
Those stumps were actually trunks as this grew in a small crack in a large flat expanse of granite.
Long overdue a repot. When you see white root ends like this repotting can take place. Roots will regenerate in a few days.
It took 45 minutes just to get it out of the pot.
And breathe ……. Sadly got the pot feet in the wrong place and it’s not the best of pots but this is one giant leap forward. There’s always next time.