Herons Bonsai at Wisley Early Autumn

Today is the 26th of September 2024 and I'm here at Wisley looking after our trees, giving them the final check over just before the main autumn season and then in the winter we will come again to check it before the cold weather sets in but at a quick glance everything looks in beautiful condition all the trees are looking very very good splendid they've renewed the garden by putting this new silver grey granite gravel everywhere so it's lightened the look of the area so again they planted these little dwarf conifers that's a pinus sylvestris hillside creeper that looks more like a mugo to me I'm surprised that it's a sylvestris I think they've got the name wrong I'm pretty sure about that this is an old tree that we brought when we set up the collection in 1997 so it's been here at Wisley for 27 years and at Wisley we have a lot of people coming especially schools are very fond of coming to Wisley as part of their education everything is looking nice and I like to think that this is a nice legacy to leave to Wisley so I'm going to look at each of the trees in turn this is ordinary mountain maple again this is homemade tree from field grown trees that we grow at Herons and this was produced over a period of I would say 30 years it's been at Wisley I would say for the last 20 years these are large garden trees that we converted into bonsai these tried maples are all part of the batch that I imported in 1993 I have several of them but again looking very very good this is just an ordinary European bean we like to show different species so that people can get some ideas to what they can make into bonsai this is a favorite with the public the public always love these forest groups because they always look natural so this is some of the trees are pretty old and this is that mint this is a Japanese hornbeam this one hasn't turned orange or red I have Japanese hornbeam on our nursery which are bright red and look at that mulberry the size of the trunk of this tree this is again another homemade trees large Chinese elms this one must be every bit 70 centimeter tall from the surface of the soil beautiful shape this is a rough bark Chinese elm this came originally from Japan one of the earliest imports imported maybe 1986 and the hollow of the trunk is all natural the wood has just rotted away and it's callusing inside the bark look at that lovely beach it's autumn color cork bark black pine to the forest of the white hawthorn quick glance at the rockery it's a beautiful sunny day but as you can see the black clouds on the horizon mean that we are going to get a lot of rain soon this is just an ordinary garden pine this is a female ginkgo in case you wish to know at least it was sold to me as a female ginkgo it's never set fruit again it's pretty old imported maybe 25 30 years ago scots pines scots pines are our favorite they always do well this may need changing the next time we come so that it can be rewired and this is that famous beech tree that I made when I came to Herons in January 1986 I took it out of the hedge one of the first things I ever did and it's been made into bonsai ever since that time so it is nearly 39 years in the making the trunk must have tripled in thickness Japanese five needle pine this is what we've come to do we are cleaning the needles species or variety of Chinese juniper this is made from a I think garden shrub one of the large bouvernances that we've been making since 1980 tohoku juniper this is a very floppy juniper this is not a tanuki but it's a genuine driftwood on that tree loaded with juniper berries here we are Steve doing his usual expertise in cleaning the needles that is a coconut very small needle pine this is a koba serrata one of the first imports we ever brought in from Japan 1986 import we call it the organ pipes because of the hollow trunks like that of our homemade larches this is a tanuki juniper and the wood used is apparently boxwood and it was made from blaw's juniper I think it needs a trim the next time we come we might change that tree and this is a very large daishojo that has been here at the Wisley display since 1997 I don't know when it was last repotted but it has been in that pot not repotted for at least 15 years just shows you don't always have to repot them every two or three years and it is thriving it's a multi-trunk tree as you can see one single tree and this is our Japanese yu garden tree or niwaki niwaki simply means garden tree ni is garden niwa garden and ki is tree so there you go our visit to Wisley I think I come here about five times a year and everything looking exquisite