Graham & Kevin Willson’s First Bonsai Creation Collaboration
Well it’s taken me the best part of three long weeks but the latest bonsai video is now available online completely free because I am such a lovely generous philanthrope. Overall this has been planned for several years but the stars finally aligned, the tree was ready, Kevin was free and my stupid head was in the right place. Please enjoy, share it around and pay attention, there’s stuff to be learned here. If you are one of those vacuous airheads that just skip to the end (remember with analytics we know what ya’ll do) at least give us a like before you move on.
I have written about my relationship with sensei Willson many times before but assuming most of you have not spent the time to go back over fifteen years of long winded bonsai blogs let me reiterate. Were it not for Kevin I would not have remained on this bonsai journey for over thirty years now. We first met in spring of ’98. I arrived with three other ‘likely lads’ to a group workshop day, it was a beautiful early spring morning and being the newby whilst everyone piled in the house for breakfast I was getting all our gear in.
I was pretty much done when this quite intimidating geezer with wild hair stuck his bleary eyed head out the workshop door, looked at the massive garden juniper I had bought, looked at me and muttered the words that have come to mean so much to me……”Fuck off” before he disappeared again.
Not sure what to do next I just hung around outside until someone came out to get me. As a fresh faced youngster with a sheltered upbringing i was entirely discombobulated. However, above almost anything else I value honesty and plain speaking. I don’t ‘get‘ people, I have no people skills, I don’t do subtlety, i can’t read body language and hints. The entire field of human person to person interaction is beyond me. Once I realised I had not done anything wrong, like a puppy taking a dump on the carpet, I began to think I had arrived in a place I very much wanted to be.
Let me explain. In my ignorance I turned up at a four participant one day workshop with a tree that would take any normal person and a very good assistant at least two days to complete. Kevin is never one to wimp out, he always makes sure everyone goes away with a finished job. Seeing the fucking great hedge I dragged in at 8am, before his first coffee, I now judge he was being restrained. I have done exactly the same when, at 8am some spud faced chancer turns up with something similarly daft and you know an early bath will NOT be on the cards.
We did get that tree done, I got sunstroke wiring outside for eight hours without a break and Kevin had to work until gone 8pm whilst my compadres just sat around watching and talking shit. The result? Well the tree did Ok, it’s now living in Belgium last I knew and Kevin literally set my hair on fire and I have NEVER looked back since. Before meeting Kevin, after several years of book and club learning I was ready to chuck in the towel but, here I am, still, and all thanks to my wonderful mate.
One of the things that has always, and I use the term with conviction, fucked me off about bonsai is the competitive cut throat, tribal nature of the whole affair in some quarters. I can state for a fact, more folk have been lost to the hobby because of that than all the dead trees we have to endure. So, it’s a wonder and an absolute joy to me that Kevin and I have finally done what we have talked about for many years and collaborated together to produce what may turn out to be one of the countries most significant bonsai trees. Whilst this might be the first collaboration it will NOT be the last. It’s about time folk like us started to work together.
This video was very much a last minute thing. I called Kevin on Friday and by Tuesday morning we were working. This was entirely off the cuff, no planning was made, no scripting, we both just jumped in with both feet and two days later we “Fucking nailed it” (watch the video).
Sadly my ability with technology is minimal. I’m from an analogue world with a lifelong love of internal combustion which was pretty much what was going on in by baldy head trying to put this 2 hour compressed to 30 minutes programme together and it’s taken me forever, like 50 odd hours sitting hunched over a screen going bug eyed. I know it’s not the best, but at this time it’s the best I can do. It is free, Kaizen Bonsai has paid for the project so do please continue to support us because without our lovely loyal followers this COULD be the last video….. but I doubt it.
It pains me to say this, I sound like an absolute c**t but do please like, share, subscribe, comment (nicely) and post our little film and all that other shit. Not 100% sure what that all means I just copied it from somewhere else but do rest assured YOUR support is very much appreciated in the Potter and Willson households.
Anyone who knows me or stops by here regularly will know I am a great fan of the oft maligned Chinese elm. Yesterday I cam across a ‘repotting technique’ though I would not recommend it.
In order to get the best from this ubiquitous variety it’s important to be involved. A good Chinese elm is a very intensive labour of love. They are definitely not a once a year brush up kind of deal. To get the best from an elm requires hitting certain marks each and every year, as with most bonsai, timing is important and everything we do affects what happens next. Getting the most from any bonsai is about maximising lots of little seemingly intangible and unrelated responses.
However yesterday something happened that made me question….
Just how much of the “bonsai” we do, do we actually need to do? How much of our activity and efforts are truly beneficial to the development of our trees and how much is more for OUR own gratification. Then taking it a step further, how much of what we are doing actually PREVENTS our trees developing into bonsai?
The answer to that little conundrum is obviously not straight forward. So much depends upon our experience and understanding and even more depends upon our definition of bonsai and what that actually is. Just giving a plant a passing resemblance to a natural tree in miniature with a bit of wire and pruning is not what I call bonsai these days, twenty five years ago that’s about all I had and felt pretty smug about it too. Looking back I was a cocky little t**t. A fact that was made plain by the arrival of a little tree in a carrier bag just a day ago that posed some difficult questions.
One of the great joys of being involved in bonsai is the discovery of special little trees that virtually nobody but their owners knew existed. These rarely turn out to be masterpieces of the art but they often show great age….and normally display what we might call neglect.
So, yesterday lunchtime a lovely lady turned up on my doorstep clutching a manky carrier bag. Apparently the trees pot had broken in the winter freeze and needed another, hence the visit. Without really looking I commandeered the bag and it’s contents with a promise to sort it out. It’s a little elm, how hard can it be?
So come evening time I had a chance to take a look and this is what I found…..
Bonsai Repotting Technique – Not Recommended!
Beautiful craggy old trunk. This only happens with time and age.
This in not how bonsai repotting should be done.
Bonsai repotting should not be this hard
Apparently the lady has owned the elm for more than thirty years. It has never been re-potted, just potted on when the old pot began to look a bit small and cracked. Now looking a bit sad, not growing very well and also missing a pot for months on end the owner thought it was best to seek some help when “As if by magic the shopkeeper appeared” or in this case a husky grumpy old git (me).
As soon as I put the whole soggy, smelly oozing mess on the workbench I was simply stunned by this apparently unremarkable yet infinitely magical little tree. This has sat in a corner, outside year after year, with almost no intervention or what we might call ‘care’ and now decades down the road just look!
The age and character evident in this determined little elm reminded me of what attracted me to bonsai in the first place, the absolute and unfathomable magic of trees and their fight for not just survival but prosperity.
This little fella has not been repotted, pruned or largely given any care for decades and on a certain level it’s absolutely beautiful and that just has to beg the questions above. However it’s now gone a bit far and so I have to figure out how to restore its vigour without killing it in the process. That’s always a difficult call with any plant that’s weak like this one is. Experience dictates getting it growing and improving its strength before getting involved in a proper repot. So some careful management of the rootball, judicious application of nutrients and a prune into secondary growth alongside a spell in my magic tunnel will see the decline gradually being reversed.
It’s my opinion that folk repot bonsai FAR too often and this proves the point. At some point the work needs doing but by working too often we can rob ourselves of a chance to see that special maturity that only time can create. Conversely we do need to know when to jump in before a significant decline happens as in this case. Most folk look at their soil to determine when to repot. In my experience it’s the tree that shows us when the time is right and the soil/drainage is of very little consequence so long as the skill to manage it properly is readily to hand.
Having been at this bonsai malarkey for so long now I figure I have seen most things but this repotting technique really is out there. I guess it goes to show, as I always like to say, language is important. Not everyone knows the difference between what we call repotting, what gardeners call repotting (actually potting on), slip potting and any of the other terms applied with gay abandon.
So, what’s to be done? This tree has massive roots growing out of the original pot (that’s now 100% wood inside) through the drainage holes and the cracks. I broke out as much as I could and packed the gaps with new soil. I have trimmed off the extreme bottom of the rootball and fluffed up the side. Afterwards I put the remaining, extensive root ball into a deep bonsai pot (at the owners request) that was completely buried. Lastly a hard cut back into secondary growth after removing all the dead stuff. That followed by a stint in a special corner of my greenhouse should see new buds pushing out in a couple of weeks time at which point I will begin introducing a little seaweed from time to time. Hopefully within 2 seasons it will be back to full strength at which time I can sort out the rootball properly.
These days I spend most of my time nursing sickly trees back to health (we buy a lot of collections). In our shitty UK climate this can take a lot longer than it might do but hey-ho!
My preferred course of action in this case is well explained here…
