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…….

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Bonsai Takes Time and a Little Patience

Jan 30, 2014 | General

This week my good friend Stuart came over with a couple of trees to look at. One of them was this lovely little Ezo spruce. A great example of the benefits of taking your time.

It’s a sad fact that we westerners are in a hurry all the time. Everything has to be ASAP. Nobody can wait for anything. Stupid marketing has sold us all on one minute this, instant that, same day, next day, super fast etc’ and we are all much worse off for it. Stress is one of the biggest killers in todays society. I should know, before I started Kaizen Bonsai I worked as an operations manager for a print company, the stress of which put me in hospital with chronic phneumonia just days from a pine box.

I do understand that, particularly as a business we need to get our finger out. Like many people I spend great chunks of my life in front of a screen prodding little plastic squares with my stubby digits. I do most of my buying right from my desk and thanks to the magic of the interweb i can buy anything I need, very often from far flung places in the world. There’s a great sense of excitement every time a brown cardboard box turns up at my door, that’s the magic of mail order. Half the fun of buying mail order is in spending time hunting for exactly what you need and the expectation of it’s imminent arrival. Once you have the box open and packaging all over the floor the spell is broken and all you have is a bunch of stuff that you either have to use or find a place to keep. It’s a bit like a kid at Christmas, once your presents are open and dinner is eaten it’s all a bit of a let down really and there’s just a bunch of crap on telly to endure until bedtime.

In a way it’s a bit like bonsai, we work hard press forward and chase a dream to create or obtain the perfect tree. Very often we cut corners and do things that, deep down, we know is either risky or just plain wrong in an attempt to arrive at our goal sooner than perhaps we deserve. Based on our experience at that moment we have a picture of what we want to achieve, the problem is in order to get there we have to push ourselves and in doing so we  tend to learn new things which elevates our understanding of what a good tree is and so our goal continually moves away from us much like a donkey being led by a carrot suspended in front of it’s nose.

I was once lucky enough to buy a perfect trident maple, just what I had always dreamed of owning. I put it in a beautiful pot and displayed it at the top European bonsai show. It got a full page in the book and it was shown in a magazine too. I kept it for a year before I sold it. I sold it because it was boring. For sure I could continue to develop and refine it but it was just too dull. Don’t get me wrong, I love refining bonsai, styling raw material is, to me, frustrating, at the end the trees are never what I hoped. As they say, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

I say all that to say this. Bonsai is not about an end goal, it’s not about a finished tree, it’s about the journey. In fact it’s not even about little trees, it’s about you. We like to think we are busy developing trees but in fact we are busy developing ourselves and our own skills, imagination, creativity and patience. Once we have them the trees appear to do themselves. However one thing that cannot be circumvented is the time it takes. We can push all we like but trees go at their own pace and dictate what we can achieve.

I don’t know anything in life that’s worth having that came easy, or quickly. For instance Ford build a car in 7 hours. Bentley take more than 720 hours. If you have driven both (I have) you know exactly where that extra time goes. Which brings me back to Stuart’s spruce.

We picked this tree up from an importer about 6 years ago. At that time it was much as you see it now but a lot smaller. Stuart popped it into it’s current pot and pretty much left it untouched ever since. Over that period it became a bit of a blob without any definition or character. When it arrived here I got the impression he was hoping to offload it on me. I think we all get that way with our trees at times. So, undeterred I spent about two and a half hours clipping and pruning and cleaning. Gradually a beautiful tree emerged. Not perhaps the crazy twisted dragon of a tree that’s become very popular over recent years but very special nonetheless. Over the past few years this tree has developed a very special beautiful quiet character that is rarely seen in western bonsai. Proof indeed that bonsai does take time but it’s worth waiting for, just enjoy the journey and keep on learning.

G.

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The Price of an Education

Jan 12, 2014 | General

I am constantly bombarded by requests for help from people who want to create beautiful bonsai. Some are just starting out and some have been plodding away for years. The defining factor is a concern about doing it wrong and messing up their material. This comes from a lack of experience. A lack of experience and unwillingness to make a mistake create paralysis which ultimately leads to nothing happening. The defining characteristic of those who do nothing is that, they don’t do anything, and doing nothing creates nothing, which is in itself very dissatisfying, and that’s why most people give up bonsai after a few years. It’s got nothing to do with a lack of skill but everything to do with an unwillingness to pay the price to obtain that skill.

Someone has said it takes 10,000 hours to truly master a significant skill. Think about anyone you admire for their skill and prowess in a particular field. I love motorcycle racing and I can confidently say there is not a single great rider out there who hasn’t spent that kind of time riding the wheels off something. The same applies to any sportsman, businessman or great achiever. Many of you will be familiar with Valentino Rossi, arguably one of the greatest motorcycle riders of modern times. You can be sure he fell off his first bike and on occasions continues to do so. Over the years he has suffered some pretty horrifying injuries as a result of his willingness to ride right out onto the edge of his talent and often just beyond. This willingness to push to the extreme edge is what has made him great along with others like Giacomo Agostini, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton or Richard Petty. All of these guys failed along the way but they just kept coming back time after time and THAT’S what made them great. The winning is a secondary benefit.

If you get your bonsai wrong it won’t end up in a broken vertebrae or fractured skull. At worst you will have a dead tree and THAT my friends IS the price of an education. I intend to write a great deal more on this subject but for now I offer my No1 secret for success in bonsai.

TURN THE TV OFF, GET OFF THE SOFA, GO OUTSIDE AND DO SOME WORK!

I have been doing this for more than 20 years and having completed my 10,000 hours I have to concur with the wise old sage who came up with that quote.

Youth is wasted on the young, age and experience rule the world.

For now I will leave you with a little video clip……

ON BEING CREATIVE

G.

 

Noelanders Trophy 2014

Jan 3, 2014 | General

Kaizen Bonsai will be kicking off the new year with a visit to the Noelanders Trophy in Belgium. It’s 14 years since I first visited this great show and have been every year since. This has become the premier bonsai show in Europe and a meeting point for bonsai enthusiasts from all over the world. Besides a stunning display of the best bonsai in Europe there is also a chance to visit the largest indoor bonsai market with over 40 traders. Over the last few years KB have been running a stand at the event which has proven such a success that we now have to take two vans to accommodate everything. Already this year we have a lot of pre-show orders so if there is anything you would like us to bring please let us know in good time. We will be leaving 16 January so don’t leave it too late, space is limited.

You can contact us by email – [email protected] or Telephone – 0044 0 1493 781834

For more details of the show Noelanders Trophy XV

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