Juniper Pruning Video Available Now

Apologies for the recent silence but I have been working on this Juniper pruning video for weeks now. But then the weather here has been atrocious and going outside has been largely unadvisable so it all worked out.

This beautiful juniper came to live earlier in the year. A tree with history created by Harry Nicholl who might be a name familiar to those who were around bonsai back in the nineties or those living north of the border.

Harry’s juniper was not exactly like anything I have had before and so a slightly different approach was called for. I was very keen to only enhance what the trees creator had passed to me because I respect his 30 or 40 odd years of effort and work.

With a tree like this there can be a tendency to rubbish what was done before, storm in and turn the thing on it’s head, put one’s ‘stamp‘ on it or ‘take it to another level’ (God forbid). However doing that is not about the bonsai, that’s all about folk trying to look good or earn.

Blaauws juniper by Harry Nicholl. Over 30 years cultivation and no wire…..well only about 7 pieces in this image.

I know that in general folk believe science and technology will save us and provide the progress our species so desperately needs. How’s that going? Personally i tend to think most of the answers we need are not in the future but in the past. I include bonsai within that, most of what we need to know is to be found behind us. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep our noses firmly pressed against the windscreen (windshield) of progress, I just think we should spend a greater proportion of our time learning and mastering the basics and paying respect to those who came before prior to blasting off all over the place like some ‘Johnny come lately’. I may have been guilty of that in the past, please forgive me!

There is all the difference in the world between knowing ‘about’ something and actually knowing that thing as an instinctive part of our being. For example, after 45 years riding motorcycles I can accomplish some pretty amazing feats on two wheels*. However were I to square up to a master like Guy Martin I would appear to be a complete and utter fool.

I like to keep in mind those who came before, who mastered skills and aced life. Knowing what they know, what do they think of me or what i’m doing?

I have grandkids now and they seem kind of dumb sometimes but when you are 1 or 4 what do you know? It’s for old scrotes like me to clear the way, support, protect and make their growing up and learning the best it can possibly be. I know they will think grandads a dumbass with all his silly little trees but long after I am gone and they are my age those memories of playing amongst the trees or mixing soil in the greenhouse will be absolute gold to them just as the memories of my own grandparents are to me now.

There are some very skilled people in British bonsai, they may not be all over social media or travelling the world but many have a deep understanding of bonsai that can only be gained by decades of experience. Most youngsters cannot possibly hope to know what us old buggers do, simply because we have put in the hours and lived the years. Like we had any choice…….

Let’s make things a little better by paying our respects to those who laid the path for us when we were young and dumb!

G.

* Relative to being an ageing old fart.

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New Bonsai Videos

7 months to the day  since my last blog post. I know how many of you lovely folk appreciate these posts and so all i can do is apologise for my absence. If I’m honest I have had the year from hell for a multitude of reasons and entirely lost my way to the point I was contemplating  dumping everything for pennies on the pound and fucking off. Im not going into detail at this time but WTF. I know i’m not alone here either.

So, i’m in a fragile state and in order to try and get back on an even keel i have made a few changes. I had largely become nocturnal, getting up at 2am and only sleeping 3-4 hours at a time took it’s toll. Now I have gone back to what I did for decades, i go outside to work on my trees from about 9pm until 1am. I’m still permanently knackered but at least some of the trees are coming along nicely which is making me feel a lot better and i’m feeling inspired again.

That means (so long as I can be bothered) there’s a lot more bonsai work to share with ya’ll. I actually filmed several projects early in the year but entirely lost interest and they are still on the camera entirely undisturbed. I utterly detest having to sit in front of this fucking screen for so many tedious hours every day and night, it absolutely wrecks my mental state and by the end of most days I become an intolerable savage, just ask Catherine next time you speak to her!

Perhaps it’s the little artist in me. Catherine says I am never happier than when I have my teeth into a project. I love to create things but the moment the projects done I loose interest. I have never met a happy artist in any discipline. Having the ability to imagine what COULD be simply serves to make everything that IS look like a piss poor second rate option.

I take that view of my own work, like all my school reports ever stated ” Graham can do this standing on his head but just can’t be bothered. Must try harder.” Right from the first day I sat up in my cot I have had a significant problem being told what to do so when a teacher told me I must try harder I just did the opposite. My mum always called me “Little Tommy Opposite” because I was such a cantankerous little toe rag.

Smart folk will figure this out right away. I currently have a 10 week old puppy in the house and he simply refuses to do as he’s told. If we need him to sit in his bed he just won’t, he’ll duck and dive and hide, he’ll run all over the house in obstinate defiance. However chuck him outside in the cold and he’ll rush back in and hide in his bed.

Years ago my mate Stuart bought a yew to a workshop and suggested that even I would struggle to make much out of it. Turns out it was some of the best work I had done up to that point and now, 30 years later I own the tree and it’s still pretty good. Tell me I can’t do something and watch it happen, unless it’s something that really matters. Had my teachers told me I was hopeless waste of skin incapable of learning I think I could have gone on to be a fighter pilot. Turns out i AM just a cantankerous old scrote, a dinosaur and even at the age of 60 I can’t quite figure out which way is up. Just another ordinary working class Englishman then!

I say that to say this……

Two new videos posted this week. Seeing as so many folk really like these it makes me happy to share my work even though it cost me three days screen time this week and my heads frazzled. I’m open to offers of help editing videos but before ya’ll rush to offer your time an assistance do bear in mind i’m what they call complicated.

ENJOY…….

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Another Bonsai Video!

As it happens I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting on three imports. We’ve goods coming from Japan, China and Eu and so I have had opportunity to complete yet ANOTHER bonsai video.

Just before you go off to see that let me get this off my plate….

Trigger warning! Don’t read the following if you are a Trigger, you may be offended. My apologies to any RM or PF employees.

For one reason or another these imports are all being delayed, nothing ever seems to happen on schedule any more. For instance….  Just getting a parcel delivered by……so called PARCELFORCE (always sounds like the name of some shit superhero to me) is a task.

Just last week I had to take a half day out and do a fifty mile round trip to pick up a parcel they were incapable of delivering. Just to make matters worse I also got a flat tyre which cost me a ton to replace. I couldn’t park within a half mile either. When I eventually got to the counter the guy glibly threw my way “You could have done this online you know, would have saved a trip.”🤬

Just to fill in the blanks Catherine (she’s expert at this stuff) had, to that point, spent more than 12 business hours trying to resolve their incompetence. Businesses charge clerical work at £30-40 an hour so that sucks. I then lost a whole morning and aforesaid tyre alongside another score for diesel. I won’t tell you what I said to the meathead behind the counter. To be fair I think I woke him from a nap.

Now I remember (as I understand it) when so called “Parcelforce” didn’t exist, we used to call it Royal Mail* before some bright spark decided to split the parcels operation from letter post (1986). No doubt there were some handsome rewards for the creation of this new wonder of the modern age. However, following a spectacular ‘oversight’ someone failed to consider falling mail volumes and how the world was changing. That and some other factors led to Royal Mail letters division basically going broke because their remit is almost impossible to fulfil profitably without the parcels business, especially as bulk trunking services were also contracted out to third parties leaving the poor old RM with the so called ‘last mile‘. What we might colloquially call the shitty end of the stick.

Again as I understand it the gov’ has a legal obligation to ensure a daily postal service to every home. However they don’t want to pay for it but the money we pay barely covers operating costs (which of course are too way to high). The business had it’s hands tied by that same gov’ because people like the idea of cheap stamps leaving the RM incapable of controlling either it’s charges or to some degree it’s costs. And so the two are now merging again, as it turns out, with typical British incompetence.

Parcels are profitable, letters are not so here’s an idea…..why don’t Royal Mail do both…………………………………… as they used to. Like my mum used to say ‘Put it back where you found it!‘ The whole story stinks to high heaven IMHO.

The reason my parcels (there are 30 of them in total) vanished is because both companies are using different systems which do not communicate, nor do the people and there is no person to person contact in the system and nobody to call or mail. Catherine spent FOUR hours on hold calling these f***wits only to be told you can “do this online” WHICH YOU FUCKING WELL CAN’T!

Add to that customs randomly taking items out of the system for weeks at a time and failing to make contact. The whole system then seems to rely upon a little card dropping through our door. There was one for each box, only about 7 turned up, the rest were either never sent or lost. If the parcels were not claimed they are dumped (i’ve over a grand in each parcel). So far i am £980 out of pocket (we’re not finished yet) directly and then I have to add all of my own costs. Thankfully Catherine is brilliant, she knows how to get this shit done even if the folk doing it don’t.

The above account is accurate for my part, my knowledge of the actual events historical and otherwise is limited. Pissy comments will be ignored. I am quite simply beyond giving a Scheiße any more. Thank you for hearing me out lovely readers.

Now, i’m off to lay in a quite dark place. Enjoy the movie 😄

Graham.

*1516: Sir Brian Tuke is appointed the first Master of the Posts by Henry VIII, establishing the initial postal system for royal use. 1784: The name “Royal Mail” is officially given to the service during a period of increased use of mail coaches across the country. 

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Happy New Year Moi Luvlies!

Just a quickie to say Happy New Year Moi Luvlies!

This larch has experienced many good and some bad years for sure. Just keep going!

I wish you all well for the coming year but I fear we may have been weller in past years than we will be in the coming one. All I know is those years keep passing with alarming speed so make the most of every minute.

To cheer you on the way here’s an little doobrey i put together last week.

Enjoy my friends 🙂

Graham.

Bonsai Larch Ramification & Refinement with Graham Potter

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There’s A Lesson Learned

On the face of it growing old sucks. In my head i’m still the invincible twenty five year old version of me who could carry a Ford crossflow engine down the street, but that’s a whole other story. Back then I was doing a lot of collecting and it came in handy to be able to single handedly dig a 20′ yew tree out of the ground, cut off the top and then carry a 125kg stump half mile back to the van. Over 30 years later my main concern is getting out of my chair without straining something whilst wondering how much longer i’m going to be able to eat peanuts. Still plenty of time to mull that over as I rest my aching back on a hot water bottle in the middle of the day.

I’m a bit pissed really. How come nobody warned me? I just figured I would keep charging on like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Turns out that’s not what happens and I know a lot of you are smiling in recognition right now. BUT there is a positive, in fact there are a lot of positives to being at the far end of a lifetimes hard graft, i’m not broke for one. Another is the fact I no longer need to do so much of that hard graft since I can afford to pay a younger and stronger man to do it for me. But above any of these trite day to day concerns there is an overriding advantage to being older that is almost entirely overlooked amongst the cacophony of white noise that is society today and that is…

Experience. Yes folk it’s experience. Something we all have to a greater or lesser extent. In theory the more experience one has the better. Experience is a vast data base we can call upon to aid in making good choices. Not everyone seems to be able to do this, some folk manage to make some appalling choices and end up in a right mess. This may be excused to some extent if you’re a kid but not when you’re a grandad surely? In a bonsai context, back when i was a metaphorical bolshy teenager full of piss and wind I made some dreadful choices and either wrecked or fatally destroyed a fair number of trees but now i’m older There’s a Lesson Learned and those things no longer happen.

This week I have managed  to clear a few days to put together a new video. I’m on a roll this year so far, this is number two!

Looking back over the relatively brief bonsai history of this particular scots pine I realise I made some mistakes. For sure I got a lot right in it’s preparation but mid way through the process I lost faith in that process and succumbed to the noise, I got the tree styled prematurely. Over the years I have learned that the fastest way to make significant progress in bonsai is to take my time, to make time for nature to take it’s course.

There are a good number of special trees in my care these days, many have been developed from not a lot and some have come from very special and wild places. Bear in mind i’m a yamadori guy which is a very different process to that involved with working on more predictable sources of bonsai trees. This development of yamadori takes a long time, especially in the British climate and as far as I am concerned if I never put another tree on show for the rest of my life that’s okay. So long as those trees continue to develop and improve in quality i’m good.

Taking time to establish our tree in a bonsai context is the work of years. Careful preparation and development of a root and branch system capable of becoming a beautiful bonsai tree that can grow well for decades into the future is not easy. Mistakes made early on cost us dearly in terms of lost time or quality. Until that root and branch structure has been developed we have no business wiring and styling a tree since ultimately all that does is push the finishing line further into the distance. Knowing when to get involved with a tree, when to take a significant step. That’s about the most important thing in the development and long term maintenance of bonsai trees.

So how does one know when the time is right? Having been patient, resisted the urge to dive in, done all the right things which have resulted in a strong, healthy and vigorous tree brimming with vibrant health and possibilities, when is the right time to finally reveal that work and uncover the trees future form for the first time? There in, my friends is the value of experience, some of us have it and some don’t and thats’ all I have to say about that.

Enjoy the video and have a great weekend.

Graham.

P.S. Do let me know if there is a subject you would like to see in the future. I’m not promising anything but am curious what ya’ll might like to see.

P.P.S. Whilst emptying out my workshop last autumn i came across this old print. Amazing it survived really. That’s me (in the Kaizen Bonsai t-shirt) about 25 years ago when gardening royalty in the form of Charlie Dimmock came to visit.

Someone called Charlie meets bonsai leg end Graham Potter

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What’s Rebar Got to do with Bonsai?

Watch the video to find out 😉

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Take a Sneaky Peek at This!

So, despite the fact we are absolutely inundated with orders from all you lovely folk I managed to find a few hours to do a slap up job on my field maple. We are currently shifting about 3/4 of a ton of goods every single day and both Richard and myself are suffering under the weight of it all but, the show must go on. I would rather drop dead of exhaustion than boredom.

My oldest and best mate Stu’ was on hand to lend a hand which made for a very pleasant few hours and a nice break. Here’s a quick video of the work. I know a great many of our customers love deciduous bonsai. Getting a good foundation laid early on is so important, I thought ya’ll might like to Take a Sneaky Peek at This!

Graham Potter

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