Sunday 27 October 2013

Fingers crossed............and toes

Well the gale of the decade is about to descend on us.........westerly 80mph winds hitting in the middle of the night with 6cm of rain in the first 3 hrs. Today was spent in the garden moving all the trees onto the ground and under the benches, all the shohin have been put in crates in the lee of the house and all the potted non bonsai plants have been gathered together tucked up by the back door.

Forecast of the storm over Britain



we considered taking down all the shade netting but decided to leave it up and test out the structure. if it blows down i'd be in the same position anyway.......needing to put it all up again ! but if it survives this it will survive anything. Only 2 trees remain on the bench the cuspidatta and the very large white pine - both weigh over 45-50kg and are hard enough to move by hand let alone by wind. Hopefully all friends and customers have been able to protect their trees in readiness.

Yesterday I took an hour to tidy the firethorn - brushing moss from the aged bark and using tweezers to remove any yellow leaves from the interior of the tree and the soil surface. This year the tree was pruned quite hard all over so flowers and berries are minimal but this ensures a bumper crop for next year and a potentially stunning winter image for 2014/15.





This beautiful tree has been grown and styled by Nobuichi Urushibata at Taisho en nursery in Japan and was hand picked by a friend as part of the shipment of incredibly high quality trees that came into the Uk this year. Fortunately we not only have this tree available for sale but the Kimura broom Zelkova and a very very special Kimura Juniper rock planting - probably the only one in existence outside Japan. I'm both proud and honoured to have these special trees here to offer for sale, to enjoy with customers and visitors, and most importantly to share at various exhibitions.


The Broom - displayed at the NEC as the winning 'Best in Show' & 'Best in Class' tree. The tree was part of a 50 strong exhibit that also won an RHS Gold with a perfect 100% score - something that the RHS haven't done for bonsai very often.




Here is our juniper rock planting at the nursery in June 2012 with M. Kimura before it was shipped to the UK in the forthcoming winter.

The 3 trees are all very special and totally unique and are available to supply to serious discerning bonsai enthusiasts
 

We have a long term (10yr+) plan here to source, maintain and supply some of the finest specimen trees we can, along with keeping up our stocks of hand picked imported Japanese trees in all price brackets. These trees are just the beginning of that plan.

hope everyone (and their trees) stay safe over the next 24 hrs