While repotting a batch of two-year old pines this past winter, John Eads and I paused to create a handful of miniature exposed root bonsai. We hadn’t intended to make small trees, but when we found that the roots we were working with weren’t as good as we had hoped, we decided to make exposed […]
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Practice displays at Sei Boku Bonsai Kai
Earlier this week I visited the Sei Boku Bonsai Kai to talk about display ahead of their annual exhibit in June. After running through the basics, we looked at member displays with an eye toward making improvements using the stands, trees, and accents we had on hand. We started the exercise by having members set […]
Coast Live Oak update – plus submission tips for the Pacific Bonsai Expo
For the past five years I’ve been working to rehabilitate a semi-cascade coast live oak. Now that the tree is healthy, the silhouette is filling in quickly. Here’s the tree after cutback and wiring last summer (see “Rehabilitating a coast live oak – part 2” for details). Coast live oak – July 2021 And here’s […]
Young pine work with John Eads
Earlier this year I spent a week working on young pines with John Eads of Left Coast Bonsai. We pruned and/or wired almost every young pine in my garden to give us a chance to review the approach for trees at different stages of development. For some of the younger trees, the work was simple. […]
Mid-repotting report: Japanese red pine
This week I finally got around to repotting a red pine forest that hadn’t been worked on in a while. Midway through, I paused to take note of the different techniques I was using to do the work. Midway through the repot I’d started by combing out the mat of roots growing along the bottom […]