Crespi Bonsai: World Class Bonsai Museum

This is really, really cool. Ginkgo bonsai. Look at that. You get all these nice pink fruits on there. This is actually my ambition to have one of this quality and with fruits one day. Hey, welcome. This is Jelle growing bonsai and yes, crispy bonsai. Let's visit. Let's take a look inside. This is the Crispy Bonsai Museum and the trees here are very, very big. This museum is one of the oldest places in Europe. Luigi Crespi started with bonsai in the 1950s, but it took 20 years before he decided to start more commercial. And that's when he founded Crispy Bonsai. And this museum is one of the activities that was developed over the years. And now what you can see nicely is you have these very old majestic trees that have been around for decades. And that is also what Mauro told us in the interview yesterday. Bonsai take decades to mature. We might have the tree, but then you just have branches hidden and twigging. And that is when a bonsai really comes to life. This is the gentleman who for the last 40 years has been maintaining the trees here at the exhibition. So you could say that the maintenance and the health of this tree are in the hands of the curator. Okay. My name is Nobu. These people call me Nobu. I'm known as Nobu. My full name is Nobu Yuki Hashibana, Japanese. My association with this museum started in 1985 when I met with Mr. and Mrs. Crispy who were in Japan to buy organism. Then I was told of the project to open the museum and school which is attached to it from 1991. And he asked me if I'd be interested to cooperate. In this context, and because I was looking for some work as we see after apprenticeship in Japan to in Europe, there was a very, very well opportune proposal. So I took it. And then as soon as I finished my apprenticeship in 1991, I came back to Europe and then started to cooperate with the Crispy family. Very nice. This is a Chinese juniper. It is over 100 years old, imported from Japan. And what you can see is here, the bark, nice and crackling. Some nice deadwood in there. But even if you look closely in the canopy, what you see here, back budding is occurring. That means that even though it is so old, it is in prime condition. You get lots and lots of fresh growth. You work also with a lot of people here at the nursery. Is there something that you could tell people that are just beginning? A lot of the people that watch this channel are just in the first couple of years of bonsai. What would you consider the most valuable skill that they could learn? I would say the capacity or willingness to observe the nature, observe the trees and to realize that they have their own lives, which are very separate and different from our lives. But they are responsible for creating this environment in which we live. Therefore, just interest, fascination, love for the trees is the sound basis for people to start to grow bonsai, I think. Great. Is that something that you teach? Because I understand you also teach here, right? Yes. But without such attitude, no bonsai works by students, teacher, will never develop, become better. So these are the materials from the course. And of course, I shouldn't be recording against the light, but this is a project in the school. And that's also the sort of material that you can work on in the first year when you come here and do your courses. And now you've worked here on the nursery trees for the last 40 years or so. Do you have a favorite here? So if you say, well, if people are in Milan, because of course, Crespi is in the north of Milan, just near Malpena Airport. But if they come to Milan and they say, I have a few hours, I want to come and I want to see a few trees, which would be your favorite trees that you'd really see here in the permanent exhibition or in the museum, as you call it? Well, it's like asking of this group of people who we do like best. Because the answer is that they're all different individuals. And some people have preference for deciduous trees. People would prefer conifers. Some people like to see huge trees. And we have very historical trees. But we have trees which are developed by Europeans. When you say historical trees, I think there's a very big tree standing behind me that I'll visit in a minute. This is also very historic. Could you tell us something about this tree? Well, this is a very old example of Iezima. Iezima is a variety of white wheat, which can only be propagated through the grafting. And this tree, unusually, is grafted on red pine trunk. And so, I don't know how many years have passed since the original grafting, but so you can see. A century or more? Oh, easily. A few centuries. This is just before the... It needs to be plucked a little bit, right? Yes. This is, of course, something that most of the viewers will realize, but pines do shed their needles at some point. After two, three years, they start to get weak. In the third or the fourth years, they will toss off the needles and then needles will go yellow. If you see a tree with needles like this, it just means the full plucking hasn't been done yet. Of course, a tree like this, you don't just look at the profile. You really have to go down, look underneath it, and you see how the ramification all comes together. And that is, of course, what builds the whole canopy, like a scaffolding of the tree. And as I said, there's a few yellow needles. They still need to be cleaned out for fall to encourage back budding. But this is a very, very nice specimen. Pines are very shade-bountiful trees. So if the shoot green cannot get any light, of course, the tree will shut down, which we want. Because to keep on living as bonsai, the inner growth is the key. Yeah, otherwise... Otherwise, the tree just gets bigger. If you can't cut back to something. So it's the most important work for pine, which needs to be done once a year. Okay, this is really, really cool. If you see my earlier videos on gingko, bonsai, you may have noticed that I say always try to find a female plant. That's difficult because if you grow from seed, you can't tell for the first 15 to 20 years whether it's a male or female plant. But if you then do have a female plant, look at that. You get all these nice pink fruits on there. This is actually my ambition to have one of this quality and with fruits one day. And I am still looking out. I'm still propagating because I can't find a female mature plant on the market for sale. But this is really, really cool. Now you teach classes here at the museum as well, I believe. Could you tell something about the sort of setup in a few sentences on how does that work? And if people would like to join for courses, what should they do? What should they bring on background knowledge or commitment? Our courses are, well, our courses last for three years minimum. And then we have four sessions, one each per season in which we explain what is the most important work during that season. Not just the work of using tools, how to protect from cold heat and how to water and how to start the bonsai from the raw material and how it will be followed season after season. So it takes several years. And then we provide all the materials. Okay. Because we are a big nursery here. So people can actually come from further away, come here and you provide also a tree to work on for the course. Yes, exactly. Thank you very much. I think I'm going to walk around a little bit more. Very nice meeting you. And thank you for the explanation. Well, thank you for the time and introducing our museum. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I can't go through every single one of these trees, but it is this Itzea forest. It's enormous with multiple trunks, very nicely aged and well-developed bark. I don't know what this species is. This is also Hanomelis. It is unrecognizable, but if you look closely, yes, it is. Or this massive, massive trident. Actually, in the back of me, you can see how far this museum stretches. But it is also home to one of the oldest Ficus bonsai. And that is actually one of the reasons why I came here. I want to see that tree because people say Ficus cannot be bonsai. Well, I'll show you one. Anyway, let's continue walking. I'll do a few snapshots. I'm not going to tell you everything about every single tree. That's just too much. Now, this is very interesting. This is a Chinese juniper of the variety Sargenti. Sargenti. So it's a Sargent's juniper. And I have a few of these at home, but the foliage is really, really coarse. So I need to figure out, I need to ask the staff, how did they manage to get this foliage so fine and ramified? Because if you look at it, it is nice and dense. Yeah, that's curious. And here you've got Quince Pseudocydonia, well matured. It has a nice fruit. I do not allow fruits on my tree because it's not well ramified, but this is nice and developed. There's a nice trunk. It is also already 80 years old. This is so cool to see one with the fruit. I'm not going to touch it, but cool. This little tree, little tree, is a Fagus Grenata, the Japanese white peach. It has been in this pot for a long time, I would say. It's been in a container for a long time. Does it say how old it is? It is 90 years old. And of course, this is a tree imported from Japan. This is gorgeous. Look at the maturing of the bark. Nice and white. Now you also know why it's called the Japanese white peach. The light is a little bit difficult, but will you look at that? Look at that trunk. That's an Arakawa maple. And of course, if you know me and you know my videos, Arakawa is one of my favorites. And this tree just has bark at every single twig. It's amazing. So this is a Japanese hornbeam. And you can tell that the seed strings here are very different from what we see in the European hornbeam. Also, the leaves are quite a lot smaller. They're elongated. They're pointed. And a particular difference is the bark. You see the striping on the bark. And that is something that's very different from what you see in European ones. Also, the orientalis is very different. And the Korean as well. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen the Korean hornbeam myself before. Of course, the pots are a little bit dry. It's been very warm here. The moss has dried out a little bit over summer. Summer is just a very hot period. It will now freshen up as the rains come in. Halfway through the museum. Sliding doors. Doors are open now. But in winter, they can, of course, be closed. That can only mean one thing. We go from the regular outdoor collection towards the indoor bonsai collection. Think Asian. Think penjing. Think ficus. Those sort of things. Let's move in. And what do we have here? This tree is said to be 1,000 years old. It is one of the centerpieces here in this massive hole. Will you look at that? I can only imagine what it means. You water this tree. Think about the thousands of years that somebody came to this tree every other day. Every other day, it got some water. And now the Crespi family has the responsibility to make sure it survives. In the end, we're all just caretakers of our trees. We don't really own them. We just care for them for part of their life. This is what in trade is known as a so-called and in fact is a Chinese alm. And you can see this is a little bit bigger than what you get in your supermarket. But truly, also Chinese alm can make a really, really nice bonsai if you allow them to grow and develop and you really start to structure the tree and don't just do the rounding of the canopy. You really need to go in there and make sure first you build the scaffolding of your branches. And then as it develops, you can go into more clip and grow methods. And as it ages, one of the nice things of the Chinese alm is the PE bar. It will create variety in colors and shapes in the bark itself. And I think it just warmed up enough, so the windows went open. Another thing that you do see here is the red clots in the bark, which are typical for Chinese alms. This is a Ficus homosaminum. And this plant came from Taiwan. It's almost a century old. I think it is 90 years, 80 years old. And one of the nice things this species does, it creates lots and lots of area roots, which of course can then be nicely draped around the trunk to really give the impression of old age. And this one, I need to check. Yeah, this is growing over a rock, which gives the same presence. This is really true. Cool. This is an ash tree. Fraxinus. Not the regular Fraxinus excelsior that we get in Europe. This is Fraxinus opehensis. Never heard of it, but look at how small these leaves have gotten. Partially due to age and growing in a pot, but maybe this is also a species that has naturally smaller leaves. I never would have thought you could make a Fraxinus look like this. That is really impressive. You can also see here how nice the rootstrap has developed. Nice aged bark on it. Really cool. Now you're looking at the private residences of the Crespi family, who live here on site. I'm not going to go in any further, but look at that massive forest. That's an Ego spruce, and easily as tall as I am. And then again, I'm standing here next to a Chinese juniper that's also massive. Now what not many people realize is that you can't run a museum and have all the trees in tip-top condition. So this part of the gardens are all the trees that are sometimes in the exhibition. Sometimes they just stand here, regain strength, get optimally pretty and healthy, and then they go back into the benches for the general public. But here, this is the back end of the museum. Trees that are just getting ready to be put back into the show. Of course, you can't live off just a museum, right? The museum is nice to have, but next to this, there's an enormous storefront here. Anything from very modest to very advanced trees is available. Come and have a look if you're looking for trees. I can, just looking around here, you see how much material they have on stock. And of course, ceramics. Loads and loads of ceramics. Now, Crespi Bonsai is, of course, much more than just a museum or the commercial storefront. There is all this outdoor space with loads and loads of greenhouses. These benches are used for special occasions. Then they put trees here, for instance, like the show last week. They have a very nice garden. You can easily spend an hour, two hours, three hours here. I need to go because they're soon going to close up. So this was Janne from Italy. Keep watching, keep growing. See you next time. And Ede Milan. Is it Crespi? No, I don't get a bonus. This is just me. I like it.