Young Youtube fan doing a sophisticated workshop

I hope you don't mind me videoing on top of a video. What happened yesterday was that I did a workshop for a lovely young guy called Christopher. He's just in his early 20s, just completed his master's degree in creative writing, and he's an artist. And more importantly, he's been doing bonsai for only four or five months, mainly from watching my YouTube videos. So I think his friends and folks saved enough money to give him a birthday present for a workshop, a one-to-one workshop with me. Sadly, as they say, even monkeys fall out of trees. So I videoed this clip, but unfortunately the sound didn't come out. So I'm videoing over a video. So let's see some of his work. Considering that he's been doing bonsai for only four or five months, he brought some of his work to show me. And because he hasn't got a lot of money, he's been making bonsai from just trees that his friends have been giving him. So this is a hazel or nut tree. Look at it. It's so beautiful. It's only had like four months training and it's already looking like bonsai. He's not been taught wiring before, but from the little bit of wiring that I see he's been doing, they look very credible. So this is the nut tree. Let's go on to some other work that he showed me. And all the seedlings he's grown himself. This is a little hinoki, special type of hinoki, and then a fuchsia. And he's brought this very bushy plant. This is also a hinoki, but the variety is called hinoki obtusa pygmya. Now what can we do with that? And because he felt that I could do something, we're going to show you what we will actually do from it. Sadly, I can't record his voice, but I think the sound will come on the other videos. So let's proceed. So that's the wiring he's been doing. You see he's used ordinary garden wire, but how neat. He couldn't afford bonsai wire, so he used garden wire. But it is successful, and it works. So top marks to him. So without further ado, we're going to look at this tree, which is the most unlikely plant for making bonsai. As we say, it's Camysipras obtusa pygmya. So what I told him to do, you see, to get it out of the pot first, and then we're going to follow the progress through. Okay, so let's see what Christopher has done so far. I've got him to tease around the root base, because there's always more trunk at the bottom. So we're trying to find the trunk. If you try some more, it's almost like a twin trunk. It's really wide. Okay, I think Christopher was asking, is it safe to work on a tree like this? It's at the end of November. We're virtually in the dormant season. So you can cut roots as much as you wish. As long as you protect it after you worked on it, it's fine. I don't want to do all the work. I don't want to do any work, because here you're here to learn. So what I'll get you to do now is to use the secateurs to be more drastic. Okay, so I'm going to show you, Christopher, what we're going to do. Now this seems a bit drastic, but rather than keep spending hours and hours trying to get to the surface, I'm cutting some of these extraneous roots, because they are really extraneous. There's so many roots in this root ball that taking a little bit off from here, from the top, won't really hurt the tree. Most people are understandably cautious as to how much to cut, but don't be too afraid. Where you get a tree that has such a lot of root, you can be quite vicious and take even more off. So we're trying to get at that part. You see it's like a twin trunk there. So until you do this, you won't know what is underneath. It's good to know Do as much as possible, because people are afraid. So as I said, beginners are always afraid to do this. Some of you who watch me perform at other places and in the old days, I used to go around with a great big boar saw. In the days we had boar saws, I used to slice off the root like cutting cake. You can't take that much off. See these are crossing roots I'm trying to get off. You don't need them. I must see what variety this is. It looks like a hinoki of some kind. Optusa, there you are. It's a type of hinoki. Camis cypress optusa pygmya. That means a dwarf hinoki. The foliage looks like hinoki. You've got a barb in there. These would normally go for like 19 pounds. See the original pound. No, it's dead right. Look at it. Original price 17 pounds. So normally they would sell for 19 pounds. So you've got it for less than half price. Okay. So you can see the lovely trunk there and it's not grafted. Normally hinoki cypress are grafted because it's an unusual variety. But as a rule, most conifers like the, in the camis cypress family, they root from cuttings very easily. Except that if you want the exact clone of species, then grafting is necessary. So you can see, we've got to this point where we can see the base of the tree. And because there's like a potential twin trunk, let me see if I can remove some lower branches. See, there is like another branch there. Can you see all these hidden treasures? So that is what you would do whenever you get a nursery plant. This is what you need to discover. Discover all the treasures that are hidden underneath. Yeah. But you spotted well, this is a lovely material, lovely piece of material. I think half the trick in bonsai is to find suitable material. And where you find it is immaterial. You can find it in garden centers. You can find it in your own back garden sometimes, which you said you like doing. So look at that now, look at that. We've got like a semblance of a twin trunk. So the next thing to do is to identify the branches which can be wired. I'll leave you to do it. We shorten some of these because you don't need them that long. So shorten these about that much. I'll leave you to do it. And we're aiming for a conical shape. And I can promise you this will come out quite nice. Yeah, this is not the obtuser, but this is a pygmy. I don't often come across this. What a nice tree. So the secret every time is to find the trunk. Trunk is by far the most important and the overall shape. And then the disposition of branches go around from 360 degrees, form a triangle. See if we turn here. And then we will separate some of the branches to find usable branches to wire. So trunk first, overall shape second, and like so. Yeah, that's it. Don't be afraid. Yeah, don't go to the other extreme. Some people go to the other extreme and they end up with nothing. Lots to cut. Careful, don't cut your finger. I've pretty much been doing everything. Yeah, so do I. Now we've now come to the second part. So we've got more of a control shape. So we're going to go inside the structure here. And we're going to take some of this out because you don't want too many inward going branches. So maybe use either this or that. Take some of the unwanted ones out, but try and keep the main branches. But the branches are going to be mainly on the outside rather than inside. Also show where the branch emanates from the trunk. So you can remove some of the foliage from there. If you hold the camera, I'll show you what I mean. Okay, so on this one, some of this is hiding the trunk. These small twigs, what I call twigs, can be dispensed with. Also if they're too close, they can be dispensed with. So if this branch is going to be used, see this is what I want to show. Where the branch joins the main trunk. See where the branch joins the main trunk. I want to show the wood like so. Showing the different layers. Of course that can be done by wiring to create the layers. Now this branch is probably too close. I can use the next one. If I keep it so close, I can't get the layer effect. So I take this off. So I've got this and this. This one I can use but put to the back. I don't want to keep it too empty. Also if this is too low, I can make it like that. So just by trimming, we're getting to that. Then we start. So in between here, you see that. I don't think I need it. Can you see the shape already? The rest is now wiring. All right. It congested at the back. I can always wire downwards to give the flat pad effect. Like that, you see. I can wire those. We can give some shape to the twin trunk by taking a wire around these two main trunks. Let's see where we go from there. What would you do about this big branch there that's kind of directly opposite the other large branch? That's quite a powerful branch. I will keep it. I take it that way. You see, I take it out of the way. There is that branch I can use but that is not so effective. That can be wired. Okay. So we got to that stage. I will just clean this with a branch cutter. If you use a branch cutter, I'll hold the camera. If you go in there and get rid of all that. So we are now wiring the branches, separating the pads. So that's what we've taken off so far. Quite a bit. I reckon we've taken more than 50 percent. What do you think? Oh yeah. Yeah. More than 50 percent. Yeah. Bush. It was a bush. Absolute bush. You couldn't see any semblance of trunk. Now we got like a vague semblance of a twin trunk but the twin trunk coming out that way is almost like a heavy branch. It's okay. So a lot of people in the bonsai world say that there's not enough young people coming into bonsai but you are relatively young. You must be in your early 20s, is it? Yeah. There you are. So that's young. The other day I had a boy of 16 come for his birthday. We did a class for him. So there are young people coming into bonsai which is very nice to know. I feel lucky to have caught myself this early. Because usually all over the world, especially in Japan and all, they call it an old man's hobby. People do it when they retire, when they're old. Unless they've done it all their life so they grow old with the bonsai. Like me. So all we're trying to do now is to separate the levels of the pads so that they don't overhang each other. That one we could wire and go out. So if you put a piece of wire from here to there and we'll find you the right bit of wire and then we do that. So we're going to wire a few more branches and we'll be there. So we were just turning the tree round. So can you turn it around so I can see what we thought was the original front. So the original front was this side with the long branch shooting to the right. But when I got to work from the back and to turn it around. Keep it there. I suddenly realized that this would make an even nicer front. So this is possible. So as I say don't ever just assume that just because you decided something was the front it would remain the front. So this can be quite nice. So we tidy the tree up and put it in a round pot. We will see what effect it makes. I'll show you what we are doing now. We've selected a pot and we're going to fit the tree in the pot. We've selected a pot which is slightly larger than you would do if you were showing the tree. But we're not showing the tree. We just want to grow it strong. So we're about to put it in a pot but before tying it in I want Christopher to just do a slight adjustment to the planting angle and we'll see what difference it makes. Just like that? Yeah. See that would make a difference. It's a tremendous difference but just a tiny little. Yeah just a slight change in angle makes a big difference. So we'll aim to plot it like that. We'll tie it in and then we show it to you again rather than straight. Put it back in the vertical position again. You see that's a bit boring but if we just do the angle again. Change it like that. Yeah you see that makes it more interesting. Just a slight change in angle. I did a video about the perspective. You see planting angle is very very important. Amazing. Okay good. Alright. Yeah. So we are almost done. Finishing touches. Yeah finishing touch. So this is a tree that's nice from either side you know. A lot of people think that you know the tree has to only have one front. Sometimes both sides are nice. This side is also nice. The slight angle it's been planted at and that's what we've taken off all that foliage. So we removed I would say we removed about 60 or 70 percent of the foliage. Oh yeah. To get to that and if we try and get a before shot and compare it with that. So you enjoy doing this? I love doing this. I'm having such a good time. So to recap the first thing was to find the trunk wasn't it? Yeah. Find the trunk from that mass of branches and the bushy tree. Once you find the trunk you then have the overall conical shape and separate the branches. Simple stages like that. So how nice is that? Okay so we finished that one. Amazing. Good. So we are going to look at the second project and what we have here this is one of my favorite varieties of juniper. It's a Procumbens juniper called green carpet. So they creep along the ground. So because they creep along the ground they tend to be like a cascading effect but the trunks can get quite thick. This one the trunk is about pencil thick and that's about five years old and these would be about at least 12 years old. So the first thing we do is we take it out of the pot. Cut some of these dead things off. Take it out of the pot and we will first thing to do is to discover the trunk. I would suggest you cut the dead off and then we will find the trunk. So that's the first thing. So we're looking at what Christopher has done so far. We have teased away at the base and we have now got to this part of the journey where we can see the trunk. Beautiful twisted trunk. You can see it's thicker than my finger. It's gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. I think we can go a little further down. Those roots you can cut off. Go a bit lower we can find another inch or so of trunk. So that's the first thing. Finding the trunk and then we see what trunk line the trunk has and then decide on the style. Don't decide on the style straight away. There's always so much trunk. That's right. Most nursery plants are planted deeper than they need to be. We are now looking into the tree to see where we can find an interesting trunk line. So the trunk is quite interesting. If we remove some of these little ones like that one and this inward growing one we can show that very nice s-shape. So these three I think you can safely remove. This thicker you can keep as a little half inch stub to make a bit of driftwood but the very thin ones you can take off. So remove those. Yeah and then cut this one. Yeah then we like that one we'll make a bit of driftwood with it. I'll just cut it down to about here. Yeah that's right. Clean up all this so that we can see the the curly trunk. All those little ones you can take off even from that the rear you can take off. So you can see that beautiful curly shape there. Naturally twisted. No amount of wiring could have achieved that. It's all done by nature. So you can see that we can place it at all sorts of different angles. You see like that. You can see the angle coming. So you can make a informal upright tree like that or we can try a cascade. So there's so many different options in there. Can you see? Beautiful. So many options. So that's by removing the soil from there we've got another two inch of trunk below. Yeah it was planted up there. Yeah that's right. So now we can create the lovely s-shape from there. So we'll discover more some of these little ones we can still remove and then we will get right down to the beautiful curly trunk. Let's show you what we are trying to do. We did originally think of making a cascade tree because these creeping trees lend themselves to that but I didn't want to be colored too much by preconceived notions as to what would turn out that it should be a cascade. So we finally went for an informal upright because the trunk is a lovely s-shape and it would turn out to be very nice. So we just take some of these little bits off. You see how nice that trunk is and if we now arrange these two on either side like that in a triangular shape. That one we bend and we will get a very nice cascade out of it. So we do a little more wiring. So this other tree is emerging. You happy with this so far? Oh amazing. Very good. So we are virtually three quarters of the way there. So here we are Christopher. We finished this one. This is largely done by yourself. I just gave you some guidance and that's a lovely s-shape. So we didn't end up doing a cascade tree. This is just an informal upright tree with lots of twists and bends in this trunk and much of that shape there that is all natural. So we didn't have to do much and we kept most of the branches. We did yeah. So you're happy with that as well? I'm fascinated with this one. This one's amazing. So what did you find interesting about this tree? It was such a puzzle to figure out. I mean we could use nearly almost everything. So again the first principle was to find the trunk, find the trunk, scrape away some of the soil. Yeah. So we went down about two inches because the original soil level was about there. Yeah. About there. So we've got about two inches more trunk and then we've got a very natural shape with just a little bit of wiring. We've emphasized the triangular shape. Nice informal upright tree. Yeah. So I hope you've enjoyed your time here. Such a good time. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Good luck. Thank you so much.