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 […]
Black Pine
Green Club
I remember it clearly – the first time I saw really good bonsai was at Bai ten, the bonsai sales area in Ueno Park set up to accommodate bonsai shoppers visiting the Kokufu ten. I had been in bonsai for six years and had seen many California exhibits, but never had I seen trees so […]
Urushibata
Urushibata’s garden is somewhat of a hot-spot these days. Known for dramatic collected material and outstanding shohin, there’s plenty around to capture the imagination. Shimpaku The day we visited 3 foreign students (from Germany, Spain and Poland) and 2 Japanese were hard at work on trees in large workshops at the end of the lot. […]
Daiju En
The following photo is a clue to the location of our next stop: Pine bark You guessed it – Daiju En, one of the world’s more famous pine bonsai gardens. And it’s the family home of my teacher’s teacher’s teacher. My teacher, Boon Manakitivipart, studied in Japan with Kihachiro Kamiya, student of Toshinori Sukuki. Daiju […]
Shohin black pine from scratch
This is the one black pine I’ve started to date that will end up shohin sized. The bottom branches are off to a good start – the rest of the tree has a ways to go. I actually was planning on moving the tree along two years ago. I cut off most of the roots […]