You’ve seen the pictures in the books and magazines. Before decandling your Japanese black pines, divide the new growth into four categories of differing vigor. Below that simple instruction one will find a photo that resembles the following: Spring growth as reported by the mainstream bonsai media Actual spring growth Our trees, however, tend to […]
Search Results for: pine
Visitation rights
I recently had the opportunity to visit a few of the pines I started 15 years ago that are no longer in my collection. I was happy to see that they are doing very well. It’s exciting to give a tree its start and then see how others develop and refine it. The result is […]
Of candles and cones
Looking across my benches last week I was struck by the very different speeds at which my pines were opening up. The differences seemed larger than usual this year. And I can’t blame pot size, fertilizer or the weather – not for the most part anyway. The majority of my five-year-old pines had candles and […]
Where does the first branch go?
At our last Bay Island Bonsai meeting, Boon had us complete one of my favorite exercises. He passes out a worksheet with the trunks of trees and has us draw in the primary branches and the outline of the tree. Pine, Pine, Azalea, Pine? It’s a super exercise that forces one to think about what […]
Hashimoto
We spent a lot of time on trains in Japan – sometimes the view was pretty great. Mt. Fuji from Shinkansen Our final train ride brought us to a familar nursery about an hour outside of Tokyo. It belonged to Makoto Hashimoto. This was the first nursery I had visited in Japan ten years ago. […]