Sum Moar Bonsai Trees? I Haz Dem!

So it's not quite the most seasonal set of photos.  So what?

Call it an autumn clear-out, when I've been going over the e-mails and photo folders to catalogue all the stuff people have sent me over the year.  All photos courtesy of Stef, who came to visit us in the summer with Joke, his other half.

This is the staging where a mix of shohin and bigger bonsai live.  There isn't a lot of science involved in our placement of trees - more like finding enough space to fit the things in without using a crowbar.  However, if something starts looking unhappy, then a new home has to be found.  Take the Trident Maple on rock (upper left-hand corner) and the large White Pine on the opposite side of the staging: they've been in the same spots forever and somehow seem to be doing all right, even if they don't really want the same growing conditions.  Somehow their little microclimate seems to work for them, and they've been there ever since.

 

A section of the central staging showing a large collected Scots Pine, some Junipers and whatnot.  And my favourite thing in the whole garden - the Pushpins!  Which are actually things that prevent the watering hose from bumping and coiling around the bonsai.

A shadier section of the central staging: another large collected Scots Pine, beeches, oaks and maples.  The guy at the very top is a triple-trunked Japanese Maple 'Chisio'.  Slightly to the right of him is a Weeping Willow that we have been working on for yonks....and we're still at it.  Oh - another Pushpin at the bottom right-hand corner :D

One of TOH's experiments - a group of little larches on a slab.  The variation in trunk sizes still needs working on (among a whole load of things), so this forest may not go on show for another decade or so.  Hurrr.

This group of small Chinese Elms somehow never goes deciduous in the winter, which probably just goes to show how mild our climate is.  Ignore the weeds though.  One problem with this group is that, although the pot is so large, the whole thing is really quite squat; so any display table it goes on needs to be both wide and tall.  Not many of them walking around, and the very few times this planting has gone out on show, we've had to borrow one of Robert's stands.  The group started with 7 cheap Chinese Elms and went through around 3 subsequent 'additions' whenever we found trees of the right height and girth.  The tallest tree stands probably no more than 7 in / 18 cm high, and we've probably had the group for at least 8 years now.  I think there are 19 trees in there now, but it really is a bit difficult to count them...