General Archives - Page 44 of 55 - Graham Potter

My Favourite Bonsai ?

Mar 5, 2014 | General

I am often asked what is my favourite bonsai. As always I can’t offer a straight answer. We move more than two thousand bonsai a year here and I love the day new trees arrive. I also love the day they leave because KB got paid. However I am not as mercenary as that, I have a collection of bonsai and raw material I have kept to myself now and some of those trees have been with me for nearly 25 years.

I do not have a favourite species of tree to work on. Tree species all have unique characteristics and many change throughout the year making them very interesting to work with at different times. So my favourite bonsai? A very good one that looks it’s best and has been developed to bring out it’s unique character. The other thing I love (being a Brit’) is an underdog. Most of my bonsai journey has been about making ugly trees into pretty ones. Some trees I see are beyond hope but others just need a caring hand and a skilled eye to reveal their inner beauty.

When you keep bonsai trees you have to come to terms with the fact that not everything can look it’s best all the time. Many folk believe it’s possible to have a collection of bonsai that look like pictures lifted from magazines, IT”S NOT. Bonsai need to be allowed to grow and as such most cannot be perfectly manicured all year around. However it should be possible to have a tree come to perfection at least once a year or perhaps every couple of years.

So my favourite bonsai tree changes throughout the year. Even with 3000 trees in the garden there are rarely more than two that are peaking at any one time. At this time of year I do have one very special bonsai that helps reinforce my conviction about what I am doing and, just for good measure the tree is a bit of an underdog too.

I bought this Chinese elm about 15 years ago from another bonsai nursery. It was a typical Chinese tree with balls of foliage on the end of each branch. However underneath I could see something very special. This elm lives outside all year around. I have to re-pot every year and about every 5 years it has to be cut back very hard into old wood and re-twigged. The bark is stunning now and the tree has never been wired. In February every year it drops it’s leaves and for about 3 weeks is stunning. This is, to me, the epitome of an old English woodland tree and today it IS my favourite bonsai.

Demo’ This Week

Mar 3, 2014 | General

This Friday (7 March) evening I will be presenting a talk and demonstration on the technicalities of choosing soil and re-potting bonsai. This will cover a great deal of the intricacies of this vitally important task. I have spent nearly 25 years studying growing media and soils used in bonsai whilst keeping thousands of trees. This will be a very enlightening evening!

The venue is Norfolk Bonsai Association. Wensum Lodge, 169 King Street
Norwich, NR1 1QW. 7.30pm Non members charge is £5.00.

We’re Like A Cow’s Arse.

Feb 27, 2014 | General

It happens every year and this one in no exception. A few warm days and everyone gets outside to take a look at their winter weary bonsai. We can predict the plethora of orders that follow but this year we have been a little overwhelmed. As a result our normal speedy delivery times are getting a little protracted. Just now for every order we ship two more arrive. The result is a stack of orders big enough to choke a donkey. So please accept my apologies for any delays you may be experiencing just now we are running a couple of days behind. Even I have been packing parcels this week and poor Rammon has worn his legs down to stumps trying to keep up. Next week I have extra hands arriving and so hopefully normal service will be resumed.

I am a little overwhelmed by everyones support and would like to say a sincere thank you for your patronage.

Behing the scenes we are preparing hundreds of new trees for the coming season. Here is a stunning maple I was working on yesterday……

P.S Cow’s arse? All behind!

I Can’t Work Under These Conditions!

Feb 20, 2014 | General

Judging by the activity on our web site you would be forgiven for thinking Kaizen Bonsai is on a winter sabbatical. You would however be wrong. January is always our busiest month and leads right into the re-potting season. This time of year we are buying tree stock, developing new lines and fighting hard to keep close to a thousand product lines in stock as orders pour in. On top of that we are preparing around 10-15 tons of our soil products, re-potting around 500 trees, planting and lifting ground grown stock and even finding time to do a bit of collecting too (about 100 trees). This year, just to add a little spice we are also working on our new website which will hopefully look better and will offer lots of new user friendly functionality.

We have new deliveries of tree stock arriving most months of the year. Already we have had about 500 new tropical bonsai. I have reserved a great deal of yamadori with my suppliers and there are a LOT of fantastic new bonsai coming soon. Over the next two months we will be seeing around a thousand new plants arriving including some very cool bonsai from private collections.

Just in case I get bored I have also been working on five new movies which should be complete by the spring. However work ground to a halt on those this week. The mild weather means re-potting is very early this year, we already have hawthorns in full leaf here. Coupled with that just take a look at my workshop…….