Feb 5 2012

A Winters walk in the Bonsai Garden with LOTS of Snow

We have managed to get off lightly with the harsh freeze for now. Here is a video I made this morning of the snow in my garden. I leave the hawthorns out all year, this encourages the aged bark that is so desirable, and they are really tough trees. Yews I always have at least one freeze because Yews are a winter tree, the needles simply glow after a cold snap! I also leave out my Scots pine.

The worst weather we have ever experienced was last year when we had one night at -17c and 9 days of -10c. for now its 5c… quite warm compared to the rest of Europe… Pavel Slovak tells me it is -26c in Czech!

Jan 29 2012

Changing the Position of a Hawthorn Bonsai when re-potting

I was never happy with the viewing position of the tree in the pot, I commissioned Gordon Duffett to create a new pot that would enable me to rotate the tree and make the image more dynamic. Take time to watch the movie of the re-potting, there are a few surprises!

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I have had this tree for over 15 years, its know as ‘The Fat Guy’ (because I have a hawthorn called ‘The Tall Guy”)

Jan 28 2012

Why the correct bonsai pot is important

We have so many great bonsai potters in Europe my particular favourite being Gordon Duffett. The tradition of craft pottery in the UK is particularly strong so it is no surprise that here in the UK we have such a wealth of talent that we can tap into… here is the rub! We spend years on creating our trees, getting them to show standard yet failing at the final fence because the pot we choose simply does not match the tree.

Here are two examples. The first is David Barlows Noelanders winning Beech raft, the original show pot was a cheap Chinese pot, the colour was wrong, the pot was ‘ungainly’ and the size simply too big. The final Gordon Duffett pot is perfect, given as a gift to David by Terry Foster (because Terry knew that it was perfect and was happy that it worked so well) the second is my ‘Fat Guy’ hawthorn.

This tree fitted so tightly in the first pot that the orientation was not good, the tree needed to be rotated 20 degrees to improve the movement of the trunk. The new Pot (also by Duffett) is deeper by 5cm/2″ and the sides of the pot have a slight taper… this add ‘lightness’ to the image.

I will be posting a movie of repotting the hawthorn here on this website

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