I dug out this English oak (Quercus Robur) in 2018. Here’s the post about that proces.

Once it settled and had a few years of growing vigourously I started it’s training. Ofcourse I also made a post about that .

Now 5 years into the development of the tree I thought it was time to make yet another post about turning a sappling into a somewhat presentable bonsai.

Somewhere along the way I entered a little contest on Bonsai Nut, world’s leading bonsai forum. The idea of this contest was to take an undeveloped tree native to your environment and grow it out towards great bonsainess as much as possible in a period of 5 years. At the end of those 5 years the tree has to be presented in a bonsai pot made by a local bonsai potter.

So that’s why the tree below is already in a bonsai pot.

Anyway, let’s have a look at what happend in the last 3 years.

The picture above shows how the tree looked at the end of 2023.
The picture below show how it looked after I removed the leaves and cut off the sacrificial branch.

In spring 2024 the tree was repotted in a nanban bonsai pot made by Black Pigeon Pottery in Belgium.
The reason I repotted it 2 years before the end of the contest is that the tree could settle in the pot the first year and then grow some more ramification the year after.

A nice looking nanban pot all prepared and ready to put the tree in.

Once the future Quercus Robur bonsai was pulled from the wooden growbox a very nice root system showed itself. I must have done something right.
After trimming the roots so it would fit in the bonsai pot it looked like shown in the picture above.

Below is a close-up of the roots.

Next step was putting the tree in the pot and securing it so it wouldn’t move in the pot and break of the new roots that way.

Et voila!
Adding some moss to the freshly repotted tree helps with protecting the surface and roots. Just keep the birds away from it.

So that was spring 2024. Now let’s jump to today, the end of 2025. The tree did good in the bonsai pot and gained some ramification. Although far from being a bonsai it is showing some good progress.

Above the English oak bonsai as it looks now (December 2025). As always the picture doesn’t show how the tree looks in 3D which is way better than you can see here, but you have an idea now.

Below is a closer look of the lower part of the trunk and nebari.

I took some pictures for the contest while it’s still in the small nanban bonsai pot but in spring I will repot it in a slightly larger pot so the tree can gain some more strength and grow out a bit more vigorously.