Below: This Acer buergerianum on a rock is one of my earliest Bonsai and I wanted to show it to you because it has such amazing fall colours despite the record-breaking hot Summer that we had this year!
Below: This amazing Prunus mahaleb Yamadori that was collected in March 2012 in Slovenia used to be a twin trunk and is a bit of wonder because the first Spring after collecting the left somewhat boring thick trunk made a ton of new buds more or less everywhere, but the right trunk that was interesting all over with beautiful old deadwood did absolutely nothing?! Two years later in the Summer of 2014, I was just about to see it off to turn it into a long Jin when I suddenly discovered two very tiny green buds on it!!! The first tiny one was some 40cm above the soil line and the second one grew almost at the top. I could not believe my eyes and luck and it is needless to say that I did not turn it into a Jin! During the next years, those two tinny buds grew like crazy, so in early 2017 I decided to air layer the lesser of the two trunks and just a few mounts later it was already safe to separate this lesser trunk from the very unique trunk full of deadwood! Wich, you can all see HERE on my YouTube channel! The stump that was left was styled with power and hand tools to mimic the beautiful natural deadwood that runs all along the trunk from bottom to top. In the picture below from the backside of the tree, you can see what is left of this stump and the amazing new roots that grew over it!
Below: close-up of the new deadwood that mimics the old natural deadwood (Shari) above it. Nothing reminds me anymore of the trunk that was separated from it!
Below: Front side. It is truly amazing to see just how many branches have grown from those two tinny buds! There is still a lot of growing and styling to be done over the next years, but I believe that this will be a very special tree in the nearby future!
Somewhere in the late 19ties, I was lucky enough to buy 3 Itoigawa Juniper starters from Danny User at his “Gingko Bonsai Centre” in Belgium. They were all very straight 30 cm high cuttings that he had specially imported from Japan to craft on his trees.
Above and Below: Since then over the years, I must have taken at least 100 or so cuttings off of them, from some of them I successfully made several Tanuki Bonsai that I when finished sold to my students.
Above and below: Both of these were Phoenix grafted onto very hard and rot-resistant Yew deadwood and now live happily in my student’s gardens!
Below: The rest was allowed to grow fast and freely and some of them were later wired to give them all the shape of a basic starter and mostly sold to colleges and my students. And a handful full older ones were sold to my students complete with a design that I had drawn for them to follow.
Below: But now and then when I hold one of the older ones in my hands I get the urge to style it, like the one below that I made a few weeks ago so that the eventual buyer has a good base to start from!
I hope you enjoyed this little post?! Stay safe everybody and keep them small!
Cheers, Hans van Meer.
The Bonsai Blog of Hans van Meer 