Couple of West Country natives turn up

This morning was spent on a collecting trip to south of the county. Two trees caught my eye where they sat in the ground back in early winter and today the buds were moving so it was out with the spade and up came a hornbeam and a beech ! Collected wild trees.......yes, rugged wild collecting site up a mountain and down a cliff.........nearly -well more like a lovely well drained growing bed in my friends bonsai area. The two trees had become surplus to his needs and had been put in the ground to free up the pots just over a year ago. This meant the root pads were still nice and fine and flat and the upper growth has stayed fine too. Much longer in the growing bed would result in strong heavy roots forming and the new thick root formation would then be mirrored by the upper growth getting heavier and coarser too.

The cream oval is 26"x 5" deep so the trees are not exactly small ones. Its nice to have a few native trees here once in a while if they are good ones and these two certainly make the grade  - added to the twin Scots pine and totally unique 7 trunk beech raft we'll soon end up with a reputation for supplying top quality UK natives too haha.

this bonsai collecting lark is quite good - I wonder when i'll be able to find another couple growing in the ground like these ! Few bargain trees here too - the trident group in the background is only £275.00. 

new shop site up and running

Bonsai-at-16 has a new professional shop site up and running. Over the coming weeks lots more stock will be added - we keep trying to add trees but they sell before the pictures get done !

Other than that whats been going on ?

Customer styling projects are on the increase - if you have nice mature material trees that are in need of styling, refining, wiring, repotting etc contact me for a quote. Over the last few weeks we've completed 2 large hinoki cypress, black pine, cypress, 3 x juniper. Booked in now we have white pine, 2 x juniper, European black pine, Redwood.......

Why are we busy? - because we charge fairly and do a good job - projects are charged by the hour plus wire / consumable costs. I don't believe in plucking a price of several hundred pounds out of the air for styling a customer tree regardless of size, species or work needed. In fact is is very hard to go over £120 on a first styling of a medium sized tree where the work concentrates on branch selection, thinning, guy wiring etc. Fine wiring a large tree takes longer of course but we can give fairly accurate price guides from pictures.

Here is one of our newer stock trees - Scots pine twin, shallow rootball, brilliant bark

 

 

Plenty of healthy foliage ready to style this coming winter and
priced at £360.00. Not a postable tree really other than built onto a pallet - collect in person much prefered for a tree like this












Lots of repotting going on and one major change to one of
our specimen junipers - its always felt unbalanced so the low dropping branch has been moved from low and left to the right hand side of the trunk. the 2nd part of the branch that was layered over the top has been jinned and now a compact and far more balanced tree is forming