Apr 28, 2016 | General
It’s pushing thirty years since I bought my first bonsai tree. It was a serissa, we were at a koi show and it was my birthday. My wife and parents chipped in, whilst the tree was only £30 that was more than any of us could afford back then. Little did we all know what would ensue all these years later. My long suffering father recently accompanied me on a buying trip, chauffeuring me around in a very nice top end car we hired whilst I spent the equivalent of the deposit for a large house. Sounds like the dream job to many I guess, a few days in the sun buying bonsai trees. However buying four hundred trees in two days, especially after a 2am start and a twenty hour day is not as idyllic as it might sound. Then of course all our suppliers delivered their orders on the same day, yesterday in fact. DAD!!!
I stuck my head out the door yesterday before seven am and there was a big van in my drive. That started a long and heavy day of moving trees around. We spent the entire day up to our nuts in wagons, pallets, trolleys and boxes. By the time it got dark at least everything was unpacked. It’ll take another two weeks to sort it all out and the rest of the year to get it all photographed, on the web site and sold. That’ll be just in time to go and do it all again.
Here are a few snaps of the chaos just now. We have everything you could want whatever your budget. Lots of native species this year as well as all the usual suspects from Japan, China, Korea and Indonesia. This year we have a lot of smaller yamadori in very familiar species including scots pine, junipers, oaks, prunus, hornbeam and elm. There’s even a massive ginkgo and almonds too.
Watch this space.
G.
Apr 22, 2016 | General
My first real contact with bonsai over twenty five years ago was at a little nursery in the backwoods of Norfolk. It was one of those little places where time had stood still for decades and whilst it was actually a rose growing nursery the owner, Andrew, had been growing bonsai all his life, as had his farther and his father before him. Grandfather had come across bonsai when he was in the army stationed somewhere in the far east around the time of the first world war. By todays standard there wasn’t much to see but to a wide eyed beginner this was a mystical place with it’s pitch painted sheds and dirt floors, the place didn’t even have electricity and was five miles away from a decent road. However for me this was a little bit of heaven on earth.
Of course I was as poor as a church mouse without a church back then and so most of the trees on display were out of my reach. For the endless hours I spend bothering Andrew he certainly didn’t get paid, I guess I cost him more in tasty beverages. Looking back today it’s safe to say I would not be here today were it not for this wonderful little place and it’s proprietor. The best of times indeed. However one thing bothered me…. Andrew lived around back in a caravan and next to that was a little courtyard affair and nobody was allowed in there. To this day it bothers me, what was stashed away behind those six foot fence panels? I had visions of ancient and magnificent bonsai specimens marking the passing of eons……
I am constantly badgered by folk trying to find out exactly what I have got squirreled away here. I am sure everybody feels we only sell the junk we don’t want and that I keep all the good stuff for myself which of course I do. However I find too much good stuff to keep it all and have actually sold more magical trees that I currently own, some people can be very persuasive as can a fist full of notes. Be that as it may folk are adamant I am being cagey, I guess that’s just human nature and the fact I don’t let many people visit probably does not help. Trust me there is no mystery here 😉
Kaizen Bonsai is a working business and as will all production based activities we do have a lot of stock in process (progress?). Firstly there is no sense in us buying special raw material and selling it right out the door if we can get double the price in a couple of years time with the addition of a little work and a pot. That accounts for a lot of plants we do not offer for sale. Another issue is that I often pay over the odds for something and those tend to hang around here for ever. I recently sold a very special Japanese pine that I bought about eight years ago at a hefty loss even despite improving the tree a great deal, adding a very nice pot and taking plants in PX which I still have to sell and ship. That accounts for a lot of plants here too.
We buy in a lot of bonsai collections and PX a lot of trees too and many of those arrive here in less than perfect condition. Often it takes years on end to restore old bonsai to significant health and that amounts to a LOT of trees here on the nursery since I won’t simply dump those problems on other folk. I have been caught out by some crooks too, selling dodgy yamadori, most of that is in my log pile but a few sorry specimens are taking up space along with hundreds of skip rats and other nonsense.
So for those with feelings of being left out I had a walk around this morning and took a few snaps of some of the more significant plants not currently on the web site. Of course that may not be everything 😉
G.
P.S Next week we have close to four hundred new plants arriving, some keepers too.
P.P.S I later found out what was in Andrew’s little hidey hole because I bought the entire remaining stock when he left the nursery. Some things are better left a mystery, keep romance alive!
The Scots pine hat!
Apr 18, 2016 | General
If you have been trying to access our web site over the weekend but to no avail we have to apologise for not being here. Our web host 123-reg decided to blow themselves into oblivion by deleting lots of web sites across the UK. Just to add insult to injury they decided not to be honest about what they had done and kept us all hanging around whilst they figured out how to bullshit us all. It appears that some ‘fat head’ ran a script with errors and burned a, not surprisingly, undisclosed number of sites and permanently deleted a ton of data. Whilst it appears they do back ups, in such an event as this their T&C absolve them of any responsibility.
Thanks to the diligence of our very own tech’ Sarah (the unsung hero of Kaizen Bonsai) we had our own back up and after a lot of hard work by Sarah and her other half we were back on line Sunday evening. Had Sarah not made our own private back up it’s very likely our web site could have been lost. I have been building this site now for about fifteen years and there is simply no way on earth we could have recreated all of it. Safe to say Kaizen Bonsai would have been finished for good. A lot of UK businesses were not so lucky, or prepared, and today face a very uncertain future. We’ll be moving servers very soon!
All this techy stuff leaves me cold, I prefer to pay those that understand it to work on my behalf but if it’s your thing here is a little more detail …
We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and I would like to pass on our sincere and heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Sarah without whom none of this would be here.
G.
Apr 11, 2016 | General
If you had the misfortune to get my attention over the last couple of weeks, which hasn’t been easy seeing as we largely stopped answering the telephone, you will know I have been a bit grumpy. However if you had the extreme misfortune to bump into me over that same period you will know that in fact I have been EXTREMELY grumpy. In fact I have not been so stressed out since I ended up in hospital with life threatening pneumonia bought on by extreme stress and three years of not sleeping more than a couple of hours a night. I think most folk in my situation would be very happy, to say business is booming is a very significant understatement. However with that comes a lot of stress simply because being in business in Britain today is being made so difficulty by all and sundry. I shan’t go into all the details here because unless you are directly involved it’s just plain dull and little incomprehensible. Suffice to say this year I have only had about 12 hours not working since we returned from our Christmas shut down. In my case all work and no play makes for a very grumpy boy.
Last week was one of the most stressful I have had in decades and so the thought of preparing for a weekend bonsai show just added insult to injury. The last thing I wanted to do was load up a ton of stuff in the pouring rain saturday and then drag my ass out of bed at 4am Sunday morning. However, having ‘manned up’ we arrived nice and early and got our pitch set up in good time. Bonsai shows are an impossible imponderable as far as business goes, you can lose your shirt, cover your costs or do well, it’s just a crap shoot on the day.
Today I am much happier, not because we had a good show or because we came home to a pile of new orders but because of the amazing good will we received from everyone at the show. Trading online leaves one open to the world and sadly there are a lot of folk out there that are very mean and many that are plain nasty. We try VERY hard but are not perfect, it’s becoming an increasing problem to meet peoples expectations and when we fail the abuse we get is often quite breath taking and there have been some tears. Because this goes on it’s very easy to have ones view of the world skewed by bitter and twisted folk. 99.9% of orders go without a hitch and we never hear from customers but those orders where things are not ‘just so’ cause a barrage of hatred to be thrown at us which drowns out everything else. It was so refreshing to be at the show and everybody was so complimentary and pleased to see us I had my faith in folk at least partly restored. So, to everyone that came and said hello, showered us with thanks and made their appreciation of what we do known, Catherine and I would like to offer our sincere and heart felt thanks. You make all the hard work worthwhile and we have now shelved plans to give up for a while. Thank you 🙂
If on the other hand you have been bitching and moaning you can go …….. yourself and …….. off! 🙂
The Coventry show has been a fixture of the British Bonsai scene for as long as anyone can remember and it was very refreshing to see the show increase this year. The sun was shining, business was good, we were surrounded by spring time bonsai trees and nice people and only did a 15 hour day. A perfect Sunday in the Potter household.
Here are a few pictures of trees I liked that were part of the displays assembled by local bonsai clubs. Sorry I don’t know who was responsible for what, just some nice (if questionable quality) pictures I snapped and in no particular order.
G & C.
Mar 29, 2016 | General
It’s been a crazy year here so far. I have never worked so hard, we’re on our knees, my last day off in January seems a very long time ago now. Sitting here in a waist high pile of parcels and a hundred still to do it seems unlikely we will be getting caught up any time soon. However just to add a little insult to the injury my year begins in earnest in April with lots of running around.
This coming Friday 1 April I will be teaching a class on the more technical aspects of developing bonsai at the Norfolk Bonsai Associations meeting in Norwich.
Sunday 3 April will be our first group workshop of the year (full, sorry).
Also on Saturday & Sunday 2/3 April we will have a stand at the British Shohin Bonsai Show at RHS Wisley. If there is anything you need drop us a line and we can bring it along for you and save a delivery charge.
April the 10th we will be at the BTA show in Coventry for the day so again if there is anything you need drop us a line and we can bring it along for you and save a delivery charge. Please don’t leave it too late as we will be packing our vehicle on Friday.
April 23 is another group workshop (full again, sorry).
Finally somewhere in the middle there I will be off on a buying trip to sunnier climes. Look out for over 300 new trees and some of the most spectacular yamadori seen so far in the UK 😉
Now back to packing parcels…………………
G.
P.S Looks like spring may be just around the corner as the cherries are in flower…
Mar 7, 2016 | General
Just put up new dates for our bonsai group workshops for 2016. Places go fast so don’t hang around!
Here’s a recent juniper I did with a friend of ours….
G.
