Visiting a Special English Garden - Surprise!

Now this is a rather unusual video that I'm doing. It's one of my garden strolls but it's not in my garden. I'm going to keep you guessing because this is going to be an absolute surprise for my YouTube fans. So I'm going to show you what a typical English garden looks like. It is one of those gardens that has what we call contrived informality. It is so natural but it's not like a formal garden but it's absolutely beautiful. So all the typical English plants, herbaceous plants, lavender, red hot pokers, ornamental grasses, you name it, you will find it here. Some of the daisies haven't finished their flowering yet. They're due to come into a flower. So I'm going to walk around and show you some of the delights of this garden because it's absolutely beautifully planned. So let's go around and show you bits of it. There's even a little small pond with beautiful water lilies there. There's even a big old mulberry tree full of mulberry fruit, dragonflies, magnolias, camellias, deutzia. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. So it's not about bonsai. It's just a classic informal English garden and a garden created by a lovely English couple. Even the stinging nettles are beautiful and look at it. I wish this was my garden. I would convert this into a beautiful Japanese garden. Look at that bridge and the compost heap. These beautiful fox gloves, digitalis. They're about nine foot tall, white and purple digitalis. And that beautiful bridge makes a beautiful stunning picture. And this apparently was a clay pit in former times, but it's no longer used as a clay pit. They dug out all the clay to make bricks. And beyond there is a farmer's field. And now I'm going to walk back. Hoppies, what a sight. Look at that blue sky. I'm reminded of a television program where you got to guess whose house this is. And by looking at some of the stuff, you got to guess who owns this house. Let's see if you can guess who this guy is or this couple is. Lovely little apple tree. There's a hammock. I've only done four and a half minutes of this video and I'm walking back towards the house. And let me just now show you, to your utter surprise, there are bonsai here. And there are serious bonsai here. I think by now you probably guess whose house this is. Let me show you the trees first. Leave you to guess. The bonsai here are a feast for your eyes. Look at these beautiful delphiniums. My gosh. This is what we call a garden and a half. So I'm going to put you out of your misery because we're going to have a classic English lunch. And who do we have here but this fellow here. You know who he is. He's not covered in sawdust. So I don't need to tell you who he is. You know who he is. And I'm going to ask our dear friend to talk about some of the bonsai because I'm absolutely fascinated. So to put you out of your misery my viewers. So Kevin you've got to tell us what the history of some of these trees. Let's begin with this monster. This you honestly must weigh I would say a quarter ton maybe or a third of a ton. The trunk diameter. The trunk diameter is about two feet. See the size of that trunk. It's a monster. You could never put it in an exhibition without a forklift or a crane. We did show it in Wales. Really? And one of the guys there Paul Spearman was an ex-miner and we put it on the table and the table started to collapse and he went no no no take it off the table. We went home and got some half pit props and set up a pit prop underneath it. Yes I could demonstrate on it there. So what's the history of this tree? Well it was collected I think about 30 years ago. 30 years. Yeah and it came out of a graveyard. A hornbeam coppice. And what the guys used to do when they were coppicing the hornbeam they just this you grew alongside them so they just coppiced it with it you know because they wanted the light to get through to the hornbeams. But how much root did they get out with this? No well I tell you what it was in quite a shallow soil yeah the soil was quite shallow very clay and we dug around it yeah and then collected a couple of years later yeah. Steve Rigg I think was the guy who collected it originally then it went to Nick Pierce for a while and then Richard bought it yeah. I just re-potted it yeah. So is the top completely grown from scratch? Yes it had nothing on it yeah you know I mean it was yeah but the trouble is underneath right the structure underneath isn't that good yeah so in the future yeah what I'm gonna do is cut it right down here and start again with it yeah you know I know that sounds crazy but that's that's you know to make it into a fantastic bonsai tree uh we're gonna have to cut it down. I've never seen a year that big it's almost impossible to show isn't it? It's crazy yeah it's crazy. Okay and this curly collected pine is it? Yeah that came from um that came from the Inverness region. Oh Scottish one. Yeah Scottish yeah so it's a Caledonian pine um there was a place there yeah that belonged to the and uh um yeah and that what what they had the concession to Jaguar in Paris and they had a place up there and they didn't use it as grass more they were French and I went and asked you if I could get collected some of the trees up there and she said well if you you know. So they didn't have much root when you collected it? Um another thing they had a fire there on the hillside there and it burnt all the heather off and all the peat down to the rock so there was only granite underneath it so they're pretty easy to collect. Oh I see. But um you can see the weird shapes that you yeah you know there's quite a few of them about yeah you're not alone but uh yeah Caledonians you know very rare. What's it from the other side? Okay yeah we thought about changing that was a few decades ago. Right so tell us something about this tree the history of it? This is one of my students trees yeah um I collected this from uh Cumbria yeah uh probably about 20 years ago something like that and um. So again how much root did you collect with it? Um about what it's got there yeah. Really as little as that? Yeah yeah yeah I mean there was nothing on it when it was collected yeah you know what I mean. So you carved the entire trunk? Yeah so this is all carved yeah you know what I mean. It was live at one point? Yeah if you can see here right yeah you see what happened I mean there's a live vein on it now and also here look you know. Almost like a tanuki so little live vein. Yeah so if you carve them but the whole back if you yeah if you can get the camera around the back Pete the whole back is live. I see okay but even then it's only like two inches or so live. Yeah and you see this right this rock was in there already yeah you know but we left it in there and the reason I've left the rock in there is if when you see these trees in in Cumbria. In fact this side is very nice look at the nebari on this side. Yeah it's pretty big there um but the reason I leave the rock in there is when you collect them if you have meadowland yeah like in you know in these places where you go collecting and there's a limestone pavement they'll actually graduate towards the limestone pavement oh you know so you've got good soil in a meadow and they won't grow in that they'll grow in the limestone pavement so I leave a limestone in them all yeah you know what I mean just to uh let a few minerals out. So all the branches are new are they? Yep yeah all brand new branches yeah. And this is it have a curve like that? Yeah I had the curve already I didn't put that into it yeah but this is all carved here but you can see the I'm just about to do what I've done to this one and uh clip off all the new growth yeah you know and you get it uh tighter in here. So how many years since collecting? Uh I think that's about 20 years something like that yeah you know you know um might not be that long it might be only 15 yeah um this one comes from Spain and you can see the difference here this one's been created and this one yeah is completely natural. So the foliage is much tighter and smaller isn't it? Yeah that's only through clipping though oh you know once you get to a certain stage yeah I mean it's been wired for for maybe I don't know 10 years I've wired the branches now they're all set yeah there's no more wire in them so now I'm doing scissor work on them yeah and this is the this is lovely yeah when you've done the wiring you only do the scissor work so such a lovely job to do yeah and I'm about to do that on this one yeah so this one will get clipped up and obviously yeah the trees from your nursery and also this one. Would the wire ever be removed from this? Well um with the juniper yeah they don't cut in like other trees yeah so you know they can stay on there for a couple of years um and they will be set at the end of it yeah yeah so but that richest tree that's some monster it's uh yeah it's um it got repotted it's having a bit of salt we would say it's about five or six foot across the trunk would be like 18 inch or 20 almost 22 inch I would say at the base it's remarkable true yeah no doubt about it but I'm going to do a lot of work to it yeah you know Richard's decided he's uh he's gone along with the plan yeah what you're going to yeah I'm going to reduce the trunk and start again yeah because this part of the tree is so beautiful yeah you know you're going to remove that carving bit oh yeah I'm going to take this off of the chainsaw I did this for a demonstration yeah all right um and it was done quickly yeah I mean it's okay yeah you know I mean but I want to do something more natural yeah so I'm going to cut through there yeah you know I mean and behind there's more natural stuff you bring the camera and just look behind there yeah you know I mean there's actually natural dead wood there and all that you carved no that's just natural really so I'm going to cut that off to the natural wood and then I'll use that as a template yeah to carve back down the tree and we're going to take most of this off because it hasn't got smaller brine you know like the trees we did at your place where we had the little branches yeah we cut it down and we've started with the little branches so then what we can do yeah we've got total control over it I'm going to do a similar thing to this year I'll choose a leader I'll cut off all the branches here and I'll start again so do you think you'll get in a small pot eventually yeah I think so I think you know I think we could probably get it into something like that I mean you've actually got a pot at your place that we could put it into yeah so but it's going to take a lot of work from this point on yeah you don't mean to get it to that yeah you know I'll probably have died by but the thing is you have to be the total optimist don't you you know it's like um planting black seeds when he was no black pine seeds when he was 92 you have to be like that and leave it to the next generation also but you can also see yeah I'm into my garden yeah a little slice of paradise right next to the sea so here Kevin in his English garden not doing bonsai no gardening I was a gardener to start with yeah you know what I mean you know then I became a bonsai artist yeah all right let's have you next to the delphinium okay a nice nice set of delphiniums yeah there you go rather than bonsai piss on you