Bonsai Bash Exhibition - Greenwood Bonsai.

Hello, welcome to Greenwood Bonsai Studio. We've just held our annual Greenwood Bonsai Bash this Saturday and Sunday and if you've watched my previous video you'll realise that I wasn't able to be in attendance because I caught Covid just a few days before our event. It's now like five o'clock on the Sunday so now all the customers have gone and everybody's left. I've just sneaked back into work just to give you, just to do a video and show you some of the trees that are on exhibition. So for those of you that didn't manage to make the event, for those of you in another country that've come to make it anyway, I wanted to, before we disband this exhibition, just tell you a little bit about some of the trees. There's two, lots of thanks we've got to do first of all. We've got to do a lot of thanks to those of you that did turn up. I know it was very short notice the fact that I couldn't do my demonstrations at the weekend. For those of you that continued, came along anyway to support us here at Greenwood, we much appreciate it. And the other thanks of course is for the rest of the Greenwood team that I left in the lurch having to do the work while I was unfortunately sat at home for a few days. We've got a bank holiday here in the UK tomorrow because it's the Queen's funeral, so as a mark of respect we're closing for that day. We don't want to leave the trees in the studio for another day, so we're going to actually take these trees out this evening. But before we do, let's just have a little walk around and I'll show you some of the trees. Whenever we do this Bonsai Bash, we put on an exhibition of my trees and it's, you know, they're not always the best trees from my collection. Some are my favourites, some are trees that we perhaps haven't had so long but we've just started working on, things that I've worked on recently and potentially sometimes trees that people haven't seen before and we bring them out. But if you come here every year you'll never see the same, you might see a few of the same trees but you won't see them in their entirety. You'll always see fresh trees and trees looking different. Often we put on display of ex-demonstration trees from previous events as well, so that's nice because you get continuity of trees to see how they progress once I've worked on them. Let's have a stroll over here in the studio. This is the first exhibition we've put on since we refurbished our studio here at Greenwood, so we've got a bit more space and it's made such a good impact. We've had a lot of positive comments about that. So this first one we wanted to show you is a Cedrus brevifolia, dwarf Cyprian cedar, very very dwarf cedar, grows about half an inch a year. This was a demonstration tree that my father did at the bonsai convention in Birmingham in 1991. I think I'm right in saying that was a BCI in conjunction with BCI and there was quite a few people from the States who came over to that convention. If you're one of those people and you came over to Birmingham in 1991, this is a tree that my father worked on and you can see it here now. The bark on it's phenomenal, it's about 95 year old. We knew the previous owner and he was into dwarf conifers, he just grew it as a dwarf conifer and we potted it into this pot earlier this year. It features in the bonsai yearbook that my father did in conjunction with Paul Goff and it was actually on the author's photograph of my father here at the back in his private collection. He's working and trimming this particular tree. This photograph was a good few years ago. So it's nice to have that on display. We've never had that on display before. This next one is a dissectum maple and if you follow our YouTube channel you will have seen that in a few other videos before. We did a pot selection video on it and then we did a video of actually potting it into that pot. We put it in there this spring and despite having a very hot, very very hot summer year season this year in the UK, the growth on it has held up really well. It hasn't been leaf cut, it is the original leaves from spring so to get it through to this time of year with very very minimal leaf scorch has been really quite an achievement. This is quite a common garden shrub here in the UK, Eliagnus, silverberry has a silver colour to the leaf, like a glaucous sort of texture to it, sort of silver underside and these are broadleaf evergreens so these keep the leaves all year and about every two years I defoliate these trees to get a smaller leaf. This one, beginning July this year, I stripped all the leaves off it and they've come back looking fresh and in really good condition. We've worked on this tree for about six years or so. Here's a photograph of when I first bought it, it was just dug out of somebody's garden and I bought it off them just in a big, let's see, just in a big plant pot like a bucket. So that's been coming on quite well in recent years so we thought we'd bring it in to show you. A few of you have seen this before in our videos, my Deshojo Maple group, again it's just regular colour at this time of year, it will just start to turn red in the next few weeks as we go into autumn and if you remember rightly this is the one where we took a tree out and we replaced another tree on this side earlier on in the year and again really quite good, in quite a good leaf considering the weather we've had this year in the UK. Another cedar and we featured this recently, if you remember this is a cedar Lebanon and this is the one where just a few weeks ago we did a video about it and we've got another front that we might use for it and there's a marker around there and two little bits of wire around there, we're going to change the front of that next spring but at the moment it's displayed with that the older front facing forward with a firm and it's going to be going to be rotated and turned around. Here's a collected Hawthorn, this tree I've been working on for about seven or eight years, it used to be another trunk on it that was removed because it didn't really need it as part of the design, it's got a very craggy mature bark on it, originally the other side was intended to be the front because these apexes here weren't very defined. If you flash back and show your photograph here of what it was like when I first started working on it and you can see that the apexes on these trees were just a tiny little bit of growth and they really didn't have much ramification at all. Over the last couple of years and it's filled out this side has become a usable front for the bonsai. Initially I've been using the other side but we had some rot on the trunk we carved out, I might now go with this side so that's something we're thinking about at the moment, just evaluating it as it evolves. Incidentally the owner, the guy that dug this up that I bought it from was here at the Bonsai Bash this weekend, I wasn't here so I didn't get to speak to him but he was very pleased to see his tree and how it's progressed since he sold it to me all those years ago. Just a nice little Korean Hornbeam here, it's one I've had in my collection for 20 years, not one of my largest trees but just a really nice base, beautiful taper, very very well ramified, small leaf, just starting to go into autumn colour. This one we've got an upcoming video on this, this is one of the most famous trees around in the UK, this is my father's English Oak tree, it's featured on the front of his complete book of bonsai. There's a few versions of this book, I know the American edition did have a different tree on the cover but this tree is featured inside and this was in 1990 and it was about 50-60 years old at that point and then in a really cold winter we had here in the UK it pretty much died off so this original trunk here is now this piece of deadwood here. So this bit that is now forming the tree was basically a bud that sprouted off here and it took me about 15 years to grow this tree from that bud that sprouted. So it's being regenerated at this moment in time, was potted into this pot this spring, lots of people have asked about this tree, I say it's quite a well-known tree, we have a lot of people asking to see it, it's the first time we've brought it back out and put it on display. It's still very much in training, I still need to do a lot more work to this to get it back to the sort of standard it was before but I like my way there so I just wanted to show people how it looks at the moment. We've got some new cabinets up here, a range of handmade pots and curiosities and bits and bobs in so that's generated quite a bit of interest during the weekend as well. And then at the far end we've got a trio of cedar trees and a particular favourite of mine so we thought we'd get them all together to show you. I don't think you've ever seen this one in here before, quite a sizable tree. Cedar Lebanon, this belonged to Paul Goff, Paul Goff was a very talented bonsai artist, illustrator and photographer. He did all the photography from my father's book, unfortunately when he passed away a few years ago I bought his collection of trees and this was one that he had done a little bit of work on, well not much, it was in like a just a wooden box and quite unkempt and it hadn't had much bonsai styling and I've started styling it now. I've wired it twice, it's just been trimmed recently, the wire's come off it, it's ready for another lot of wire but it isn't in bad condition now to say, it's a pretty much unwired evergreen, this wants to be here. We can do a little bit more work on some of these other branches in the future so it's ready for wiring which is a job I could do during the winter months. It's on display in here next to this cedar Lebanon that we worked on just a few weeks ago that I repotted, there's a little video out about that. So it's nice to get them all together, this is a Deardor cedar that I bought at an auction, bonsai auction, maybe five years ago and here's a photograph of what this looked like, looked like when I bought it. It was quite unkempt, quite shaggy in a tiny pot so it's come on really quite well. This is always a little bit of a shaggy cedar, it never has the tightness and the density that you get with the cedar Lebanon but and it's always quite a bit paler but it's quite a nice tree to work on, heavy trunk tree but it's just nice to see those three together and a lot of people have said how much of an impact that made to come through the doors of the studio and they're confronted with those trees. Just a cute little shishigashira maple here on the left hand side, we've got another one down at the end we'll show you in a little bit. So I've got a pair of these and this was actually, I've had this tree probably 12 years, it was one of about four and recently this year a customer of ours who bought one of the four, unfortunately passed away, this tree came back to us so we've now got two out of four here so we put them both on display. So this is the first one, we'll show you the other one in a little while and just as a bit of fun I've put them into the same style and shape and colour bonsai pots. This is a western hemlock, been styling it from nursery stock for about 12 years or so, it was about eight year old when I bought it in a beautiful vintage Gordon Duffett pot, little formal upright hemlock. Moving along we've got an ukon maple, a single tree, beautiful roots, trunk, in a pot by Petra Engelke, very very beautiful pot, really suits the tree, always a bright colour, bright green and then at this time of year in autumn the leaves will just go more yellow. So this is just starting to transition now with some of these still being the lime green and some going to the golden yellow as we go into autumn. So beautiful, stunning looking tree, we just had to have that on display this weekend. An old favourite of mine, Ezo Spruce, twin trunk, always looks quite a reasonable tree, needs a little bit of work on it now but it's a worthy exhibition tree. The dark bark and the green just gives a nice contrast next to this ukon maple on the left hand side and here on the right hand side of it a Japanese spindle euonymus and it's peak autumn colour. When these go bright red like this they don't keep the colour for that long, you've probably got a week or two left in them. This was featured on the front of the Royal Horticultural Society bonsai book, Wisley handbook, published a few years ago, same tree look and the same pots. It's nice to have that on display and bright red colour then gives way to a blue atlas cedar. This tree had been bought from a customer, it wants a little bit of styling and work doing to it and some health getting back into it. It's done really well this year, I've potted it into this pot that picks up the colour. In the needle it's got cones on it, oh it's beautiful, really bright fresh blue and down at the end my hairy trunk, trident maple, imported from Japan. I bought it a number of years ago, very small leaf, just going into autumn colour in a Walsall Studio ceramics bonsai pot that picks up the tones in the bark so nice. The sort of cinnamon colour tone in the bark here where the bark exfoliates up through the trunk here, picked up really nice in the glaze of the pot. And up here at the far end we've got the other little shishigashira, just the twin of the one we showed down at the other end of the studio. So collectively just a few trees here from my collection and I hope those of you that did make it to the event had a great time and I hope you enjoyed looking around the nursery and making a few purchases and enjoyed the exhibition. For those of you that didn't make it to the event I hope this has given you an insight into it and hopefully encouraged a few of you to pop along to the event next year, keep your eyes peeled as to the dates of the We Wood Bonsai Bash 23 and thank you very much.