Feb 13, 2016 | General
It’s silly season around here and it’s tough to get much done from beneath your avalanche of orders. Not that I am complaining it’s just an insanely busy time and I also have to run around buying and moving our new seasons stock too. This year we have a lot of different and unusual plants coming including incredible scots pines.
I have noticed over the last few years as Japanese imports have reduced in quality and increased in price just how hard it is becoming to find mature bonsai trees at an affordable price. Not so long ago it was a buyers market and good mature bonsai were there for the asking. However that’s all changed for a number of reasons I won’t go into here. The scarcity of decent trees has caused some businesses to simply increase their prices. The cost of nice bonsai at the recent Noelanders exhibition was the highest I have ever seen with some trees that just a few years ago would have been a few hundred now being offered at a few thousand. The trouble is nobody was buying, folk are not stupid. We also saw yamadori, much of which will take ten or more years to even come close to being bonsai offered for sale at prices that would far exceed the value of the finished bonsai. Once again nobody was buying. There is a secret to making plant sales pay in a business context and I won’t be sharing it here, suffice to say most businesses in the bonsai community are simply not aware of a few basic business rules. However the buying public are pretty smart and are not easily fooled and anyone who is duped won’t be caught again.
Good honest value for money wins the day every time. That’s not to say that smart folk simply buy on price. I have always based my buying decisions not on price but on value. In general it’s not what you pay but what you get and as they say “the quality remains long after the price is forgotten”. Buy quality at a fair price and your money is always safe. Buy cheap and you get cheap. Not much gets cheaper than bonsai. Considering what goes into producing these plants the only folk making any money are the VAT men. Take this new arrival for instance………
I recently got this old Korean hornbeam from one of the UKs most talented bonsai artists. It’s been twenty to thirty years in a bonsai pot and probably twenty five years or more before that. It took me four hours just to tidy it up and the John Pitt pot would have cost a few hundred. Untold hours for less than a couple of grand or about half a weeks work at your local garage. The VAT man is getting the lions share here! However keep the tree looking good and improve it and in ten years time this tree will be worth more even allowing for inflation. I have proved that fact hundreds of times over during the last twenty five years. Unlike your worthless car which plummets in value every year the cost of decent bonsai is only going one way and as trees become harder to obtain the demand is simply going to increase. Junk, nobody wants. Good bonsai are hard to finance but worth the price in the right hands.
This old hornbeam will be for sale on the web site next week but for now here’s a peek…..
G.
Jan 26, 2016 | General
Just got back from our annual gruelling, but ultimately rewarding, trip to Belgium for the Noelanders Trophy. Too many years have passed by with us visiting this event but it never ceases to surprise in one way or another. This year the buzz around the trade was a maudlin one bought on by the dramatic increase in the number of traders attending (96 in the end I heard). Everyone feared the worst, after all there is only so much pie to go around and with more mouths to feed everyone is going to get less. As it turned out one or two did indeed lose their shirts. However thanks to our faithful and loyal customers, a few good prices, some new products and a dash of hard work and good luck we were a cats whisker away from a record year. SINCERE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CONTINUES TO SUPPORT US! It’s quite humbling in a way but then we do work harder than anyone else in this business and are not here just to make a quick buck and so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise when we do well but, at the end of the day, we know folk have a choice and are supremely grateful that so many of you continue to support us. Thank you!
We were so busy over the weekend I barely got chance to walk around. However early Sunday morning before anyone was about I got ten minutes to nip around the show benches. I do not know who won what but did take a few snaps of trees I personally liked so, in no particular order, here are those snaps.
G.
Got the washing out 🙂
My other personal favourite. Creativity of the highest order!
Privet supplied by us a couple of years ago.
My own personal favourite in the show.
Jan 16, 2016 | General
If you stick at bonsai long enough and do enough work there comes a time when the doubt and uncertainty disappears. In relation to styling trees a lot of folk seem to struggle when it comes to dealing with the initial basics. A few years back I was regularly running group workshops at a local nursery. I turned up early Sunday morning and generally had ten participants, mostly absolute beginners, who turned up with garden centre material, a great deal of which had no business being bonsai. Given six hours I had my work cut out to teach everyone how to wire and get ten presentable trees out by the end of play. At first it was a struggle and I was dreading every visit. After a while I learned to trust my instincts and just went with my first impression every time. This worked out pretty well and before long the classes grew to fifteen folk 🙁
Having worked on bonsai relentlessly seven days a week, more or less, for twenty five years now I have honed that instinct and now I generally only have to glance at a tree to know how to deal with it. I always trust my first impression and go with my first idea. I have seen a lot of folk approach raw material and they instantly know what to do but then over complicate the process and start turning the tree this way and that. Before long they have lost their faith and become very confused and lost in the process. Then the cutting starts and in time there is simply not enough left of a tree to do a really good job and in most cases a promising tree becomes a semi-cascade, windswept or literati. All impressive styles if done right but not so impressive as a last resort because a tree has been reduced too much. Given a styling by committee this is the usual outcome.
Dan Robinson said it’s really important to fill your mind with images of wild, old and impressive natural trees. Then when faced with a piece of raw material at some point your mind can regurgitate an image for you that fits the bill. This all seems to happen at a sub-conscious level and some folk have become masters of exploiting the process. I find it’s a rare day I can’t walk up to a tree and some how just know what to do. In some cases a tree is just not right for the process and that’s tough. In other cases the material is so good there are a few options and experience dictates the best solution from several possibilities. On other occasions I look at a tree and see that the sum of it’s parts should make a very good bonsai but do not necessarily see the whole story. In this case I tend to put the tree away until one day I just know what to do.
This week I decided to get one of our sabina junipers worked. It’s been here a while and seeing as nobody gave it a second glance I figured a little refresh should do the trick. The tree has a lot of deadwood and some sand blasting soon sorted that out. Once clean it was easier to see what I had to work with. Designing junipers primarily revolves around getting the trunk inclination right and I thought this one was easy. However given the limitations of where the roots were and the live veins I was suddenly stopped in my tracks. What made it particularly difficult was that the top went away from me and was simply not bendable. The reverse side looked good but the roots were a foot behind the trunk and could not be seen from any angle. I turned the tree every which way for an hour before giving up. I just could not find a pleasing and practical solution. However having slept on it the next day I could see the answer as plain as day. The resulting tree is unlike anything I have done before and whilst it is currently all a bit short and thin i am content with the outcome for first work.
When working with yamadori it becomes necessary to suspend a lot of the rules we rely on for guidance. Trying to make yamadori conform will destroy a trees unique character every time. Personally I love to see these trees in their natural form but at some point we have to move forward and compromise is always the order of the day. This tree will easily re-pot at this angle with a minimum of trauma for the tree and as the foliage fills out and the two parts knit together I think it will build an impressive bonsai. Watch this space.
G.
Jan 1, 2016 | General
I understand it’s customary to wish ones friends and family a happy new year today. Seeing as I do not have any friends I thought I should make up my quota of good wishes by doing it here.
Along with Catherine I would like to sincerely wish all of our family, friends and customers a sincere thanks for your support and care throughout 2015 and we wish you all a happy prosperous and fulfilling 2016. We are looking forward to a strong year and have lots of cool things waiting in the wings.
I thought, seeing as some might have missed this, you might like to see what the early morning on a deserted Norfolk beach on new years day looked like 😉
Have a good one!
G.
Dec 28, 2015 | General
Anyone who knows me will know what an unsociable old grouch I can be. If those folk happen to do bonsai they also know I like to take the gently gently approach to creating bonsai. I like to take my time and use as light a touch as possible.
Seeing as everyone was in bed around here until lunch time Christmas day and I was up at my customary 5am it seemed like a good opportunity to get some work done. However I knew I had a fight on my hands and this was no domestic dispute it was a proper pub fight.
I got this good sized larch from a friend of mine who had put it in his garden over a little pond. I first saw it about fifteen years ago and regularly badgered the guy to let me have it. Well in time my persistence paid off and it was mine. That was about three years ago now. The trouble was the tree was so massive in the top it took a couple of severe pruning sessions to get any useable branches. However in that time I got fed up with the ugly brute sitting around here drinking my water and taunting me. Time to pull on the big boy pants!
It took a couple of kilos of wire, a few tourniquets and a lot of grunting but by the end of boxing day it was done. I do hate this type of big wire wrestling match but with some material it’s the only way unless you are in your twenties and have the patience of Job. As it turns out this is not the prettiest tree in the yard but I wasn’t about to throw it out was I?
G.
Dec 25, 2015 | General
I took half a day off, now it’s back to work!
Just finished off this sweet little juniper that Ramon got wired a few days ago. It’s been for sale on the web site for a while now without a single murmur of interest. We cut a large branch away and the deadwood was cleaned by hand. No carving on this one and no wire over 2mm. It’s entirely beyond me why folk don’t buy these beautiful trees. In my opinion this is the pinnacle of bonsai. A stunningly beautiful tree with very little human intervention, that’s as good as it gets. Out of respect I will refrain from putting the lights on it but Christmas trees don’t come more beautiful than this, do they?
Just in case you were wondering what we did with our afternoon off Catherine bought me a present (last picture), she’s wrapping it up now :-))) Sarah reckons i am having a mid-life crisis. At my age you just have to ‘go for it’. Who knows how long we have left right?
Have a very happy Christmas.
G.
A little festive cheer for those who need it.
Gotta love my wife!
