Oriental Hornbeam Bonsai from Start to Finish – Walter Pall & Andrija Zokic at EBA 2026

Hello everybody, I'm here at the EBA convention 2026 in Slovakia, Banska Bistrica, which is in the heart of Slovakia, near the mountains, and we are starting the first demonstration for today. And this is the tree that we are going to start out with. Andrea and I, Andrew will come in later. This is an oriental hornbeam, which is looking like already a pretty good tree. By accident, this was found like this in nature, so unchanged. And now Andrea is here, Andrea Zukic from Croatia, who was basically the master. I'm only the speaker, so he is the master. And Andrea will now tell us about this tree, what he is going to do with it. So I'm glad that I'm here in Banska Bistrica in Slovakia. I'm here for the first time, and we had a very good time yesterday, and today we will continue. Today is a demo that I will work on this tree that I bring from Croatia. It is Carpinus orientalis, oriental hornbeam. It's a sub-mediterranean species. It's a very good species for bonsai because of the character of the trunk, because of small leaves, small internodes. Very often they have nice nebari, they have nice character in the branches, and they are very tough. They like to be in the bonsai pot. This one is elegant. Very often I find some, this is collected by me and my friend Marko. Very often we can find big, big, big orientalis, very powerful, they are very often powerful. But in this case, this one is elegant with lots of curves, and we will try to show these curves in the trunk, in the branches, and keep that elegance in design. Okay, you said the most important words, that we are not trying to change this into the typical oriental hornbeam, which is a fat, powerful tree. This is an elegant one, and we don't want to destroy this. No, we want to enhance it, we want to bring it out. So every move that we do, we will probably cut a lot, is aimed for bringing out the elegance of the trunk. The crown is then to put the halo all over the tree. It's not about building a crown, it's about bringing out the trunk. Many people confuse this, that bonsai styling is all about wiring and making a crown. Yes, but not for the purpose of the crown, it's for the trunk, especially on this kind of trunk. This tree is collected, I think, three years ago, something like that, three growing seasons, and first I will remove things that are obvious to me, to remove it, like some sticks, and I will try somehow to make it that these branches, that they have taper and moving, things like that. So first I will remove everything that is obvious. But do you have a plan, will it be an orthodox sort of bonsai, or more a loose one, a natural one? Well, definitely, I always like to make something that looks, that gives you a kind of natural feeling. Now, in orthodox bonsai we have learned, the first thing is you must find the front. We haven't even spoken about that. Is there a front on this tree? Well, this can be the front, or this can be the front, but I will try somehow that this tree looks good from everywhere, you know, like a sculpture. When you are walking around the sculpture, there are some sides that you like more, and sides that you think that are not so good, so it will be something like that with this tree. Probably this will be the front, and probably, let's say, the best side, and I will do something like this. We try to tilt the tree like this, so that the tree goes a bit more to the viewer, and I think this will be maybe the most interesting angle. Now, if this is the front, there is this interesting thing here. It's kind of, it looks like it's dead, but it's not really, because it does this curve, it does this swine's tail, you know, like a swine tail. It's very interesting, but somehow I'm not so sure whether it belongs to that tree. What are your thoughts about this? Well, this is probably part of the branch is dead, and it is possible to make some kind of sherry here, and keep this branch, but I don't think that we need it. I don't think that we need that branch. I think maybe it's even better to cut, and to show even more this interesting curve here on the bottom. I think I will remove it, carve it, this also a bit, carve it. I understand. So, what we said before, we are going to bring out the elegance of the main trunks. This is not the main trunk, this is just an extra. Now, of course, it's interesting, and we could keep it, but this takes away the eye from what's really important, which is the elegance of the trunk. So, if we remove it, then it will be clearer. I stress this, because I know that in the audience there's always people who hate me for cutting something off. Well, if you don't like this, you better do Ikebana, because bonsai, especially with collected tree, is about making decisions, about cutting something off, even if it looks nice, but the tree will look nicer afterwards, and this is a decision that we can make, because we have done this hundreds of times, we have the experience, we can foresee it. I like this, and it's good that it's going down. We are now in the middle of Andrea's demonstration. Andrea has cut off everything that he knows definitely that he's not going to need, and we are now starting to wire these branches. The one that he starts out with, we had a debate about whether that should be there at all. It is okay to fill a big hole, however, the character of this branch is very youngish. Now, look at the whitish, grayish sort of bark of all these trunks and branches, and that shows that they are about 30, 40, 50 years old. Now, this is brown and has a very different sort of color and texture, because it's young, it's only three years, five years old. Now, of course, in 30 years, that will also be gray, but in 30 years, I will be 120, okay? So, in case you are not sure what to do with a branch like this, what is your suggestion? Well, you may as well style it now and integrate it, because we decided that this must look nice after the demonstration, and we keep it. But it would be totally professional to cut it off now. But it does not matter whether you cut it off now or in a year, so you might as well do it now, because it will look better, and then make that decision later. Of course, that shouldn't lead the viewers to think, ah, so if I don't know it for sure, then I don't cut it off, because you will end up with not cutting things. That's a typical beginner fault that they try desperately to keep on a branch, and they keep telling me, oh, Walter, can we not air-layer this? Like, wow, what a genius idea. We can air-layer it. Yeah, sure we can air-layer it. So when do you air-layer something? Well, you air-layer for two reasons, for three reasons. One is that you have a very, very nice little part of the tree, which you can only get as a small bonsai by air-layering it here, but this is not the case here. OK. Another reason would be to air-layer, because you try to keep it, you try to find a reason for not cutting it, OK? Or they say, oh, it's not the right time to cut, or my cutter doesn't work, OK? So, well, if you really don't want to cut, you shouldn't do bonsai. So it's typical beginner-like behavior, that you are afraid of doing necessary things. That's correct, and especially when they buy a tree, a piece of material which is prepared for bonsai, they can't assume right so that everything that's needed is there. But this is a tree that was not prepared for being a bonsai. It was found in the wild like this. So there, very often, you have many, many branches which it's better to cut off for artistic reasons, and that's what we show here. Well, you can only judge by the result at the moment, but we, as artists, having done this so often, we think about the long-term result, like in five to ten years, OK? But that doesn't help you much, because you must make a decision now, OK? In this case, the decision was to leave it on because it will look better. But if he had said, I want to cut it off, that's fine with me. Also, maybe I will cut off. We will see later. I will try to bend this branch here. So this is also an option to fillet this whole. Yeah, but now we're not really speaking about cutting off anymore. We now wire everything, and maybe then do a little cut of something that is too long. We want this tree... This branch is gone, so this one which was here was removed, the one which was... This branch is gone, and that makes a huge difference, of course. It's much cleaner now, yeah. So now it's a lot of work, and then they will first do the wiring and the bending, and then the final design, and that's going to take about an hour or one and a half hours. Work, which is kind of boring, which is a good time to do something else. He showed us in Munich. No, I know this method for a minimum of 10 years. He showed it in Munich. We have learned to overlook these things, because this is not ugly anyway. So as a professional, I don't care much. There's too much attention for wiring. Like, oh God, it must be perfect and everything. Well, why? Because you want, as a Japanese or Chinese person, you want to sell this tree, right? But we don't want to sell this tree. As long as it does the purpose, it's fine with me. But of course, then if I say that, God, they will crucify me. But that's my personal opinion, and I got away with it. And the end result counts, and the end result will be in 20 years. There is reverse taper on the tree. So like, it's here, fat, and here, it's thin. Yeah, okay. Well, there are some things. Well, that's like choosing a spouse to marry, okay? So you will never find the perfect lady. There will be some faults, okay? And you will have to live with the fact that you probably will have, they will say forever, and maybe something you can change. So your question is, can we change something here? No, not really. Can we live with it? Yes, we must live with it, okay? And it gives this natural flavor. And if you really hate it, look away and find another tree. Because this is... Yes, but we still, it's not a good excuse to say something is in nature, so you can't do it. I mean, nature is not where you look into the mirror. I'm sorry. So you have to do something. So we don't want any tree, we want a good looking tree. So of course, there is real inverse taper in the nature, but that doesn't mean we do it for choice. But if it happens to be here, and the rest is fine, and the tree is elegant, I'm not really bothered by this. Sometimes it bothers me, sometimes not. Sometimes it gives me some organic feeling, something is like very, I don't know. Since this is a very natural tree anyway, and styled like as if we found it like that, it is not too ugly. If it were a very well-prepared Japanese tree for later styling as bonsai, then everything should be perfect. Then the bar should be perfect, the taper, there should be no holes and everything. But here, this never will be a Japanese tree. It will always be this natural sort of tree, maybe looking like a penjing or something, like a real natural tree. And there, it is perfectly okay to have some of these faults. It's even part of his nature, I think. You get used to it, and even you kind of like it after a while. That's my take. Does that help you? So for example, this is good front, yeah? So you point it to this point where it's too much going from that one section. Yeah, it's giving the tree a lot of character. And I think in traditional approach, what your teacher will tell you, you choose one line, which will be continuation of this trunk from here. So maybe you say, okay, I go somewhere here, here, here, and everything else will be cut off, because you need to achieve taper. And then, if you do that, what you will do with branches which will grow there? In case you have only one single trunk, you have very limited options what to do with the branches which are not yet there, but will grow there. But it will be much different pick up. Exactly. And that's why the trees which are grown in Japan for being bonsai, they are good tapered and single trunk, and the result is almost always the same. Because you don't have this kind of thing. Because they were removed on purpose. And the result is almost always the same? With the situation afterwards, I will first try to not have that many branches, like not just picking one line, but like lightening up the parts that would be otherwise even more like, even more reverse taper. No, I would not worry about reverse taper or anything like that. This is as it is, and it will change a bit over the next, but it will stay. I live with that. I have enough branches here, maybe a bit too many. I work with these now, and then leave it alone for a year or two, and then let it grow freely. It looks ugly, ugly, and then cut it back, and then start it again. And after four or five years, it will first time look really good. That's a normal way of styling that tree. What we do now, we prepare it for a grand future. And I have to repeat myself, but this here is a demonstration for the general public, and we also shown on the internet, and we do videos. And it's better to have a tree that looks good already right now. Have you ever read that, well, we all know the rules, what should be and what should not be. But have you ever read that the literati style does not apply to this rule? Have you ever read this? So, well, anyway, I tell you now. The Japanese official also say, you know, these are the rules. However, with the literati style, you can't cross like that, because it's literati style. Okay, so why is that? I tell you why. Because there was commercial bonsai. Are we still on video here? Yes. Well, that's super, okay. There was commercial bonsai already 200 years ago in Japan, okay. And they did, what did they do? They did something what people like. They did flowers trees, and they did everything nice and perfect, so that people would buy these trees. This was not basically an art. This was a craft to produce something that the market likes to make money. Full stop, okay. And the literati, they were interested in these, but they said, this is commercial, okay. They went to the mountains after their retirement, and then they saw all these conifers, slim pine trees there. And they said, why, and they did some bonsai. Why are we not allowed to do our bonsai like these trees? And they said, sure, we are allowed. So they started the literati style. And they didn't copy the commercial bonsai, but they copied the real tree. And this is why in the literati style, you have the rule that you can cross, but it must look good. So yeah, okay. And there can be branches where there shouldn't be one, but it must look good. And I took the freedom to say, why does this not apply to all trees? Not only literati trees. So I did nothing else but say, for every tree, is that not true? Especially if the tree comes from nature. And that was the birth of the naturalistic style, okay. And that was 30 years ago, okay. And they crucified me for that at that time, but not anymore. Now it's sort of almost mainstream. You know, it's slightly crossing. Yes. But it's okay. But how do you deal with this situation when it melts together? Well, it melts together, you either like that, but usually, maybe sometimes you put something in between, but that's too late. Like a stone. Okay. You put some piece of wood or something. Okay, that's pretty deep now. This will look fine after the demonstration. It will look fine in 5 to 10 years. In 20 years, that will fuse together. If that's a problem for you, then you better know now. You understand? Yeah, this will be one trunk and some people like that. I don't like that. No, but in 20 years, it doesn't matter for me anyway. I think in my area, if you grow this tree on a good way, I think that even this hole, maybe it will be fused. It's very simple. Yeah, because... Like this one? No, just they will merge here. Okay. But I have a solution for you. You understand? Yes, in the very long run, that may be a big problem, but you can prolong the period when it looks good. How do you do that? Well, you make sure the tree does not grow. Like you pinch it, you hold it short, and you just let not much grow up here. Because why is that? Because the energy is not produced from the roots to feed the tree. That's wrong. The energy is produced from the foliage, which first needs the water. The water is pumped up and the water, and here with the air together and the light, produces energy in the form of starch, carbon hydrate, sugar. And this then is stored in the branches and that makes them thicker. So the more green you have, the more thicker it will get. So if you let it grow freely, as I said, this will happen very quickly. Now, if you want to avoid it, you pinch it back and it will stay small forever. And that's one of the reasons why they teach you pinching. Pinching is something that everybody knows. It's in the books. It's official that you must pinch a Japanese maple or when the new growth comes out and you go through the tree. And with big trees, it takes many hours one day. I have about 350 trees, so I would spend years to pinch my trees. So why is that? Usually people tell you, because to make the tree denser. Well, where do you find the most dense trees? That's a good answer. In a hedge. So in a hedge in Germany, in the German, Carpinus betulus, okay? European hornbeam hedge. These are so dense that children can walk on them, okay? That's because the Germans go out in spring and pinch every hedge. They take weeks. The whole village pinches their hedge. No, it's not true. Nobody ever pinches a hedge. So do the hedges. You can cut this out. Why does it grow very dense without pinching? If pinching is the reason for making it denser? Because pinching is not the reason for making it denser. Pinching is a reason for not letting it grow, not getting fat. Stay like it is. It does not get more ramification with pinching. That's simply wrong. The whole bonsai world is full of this. It's a big lie. Letting grow freely and cutting like a hedge, that makes it dense. But that's terrible because, oh, you cut it like a hedge. Do you cut your grass with scissors or do you take a lawnmower? So what's brutal with a lawnmower? The denseness comes not from pinching. The denseness comes from the following. That the tree grows freely. And then when it looks like I have to cut the hedge, I do nothing. And then it grows. And then my wife tells me, somebody must cut the hedge. Who is somebody? And then one day you cut it. And then you brutally cut it back. You know what the hedge says? Oh, God, somebody has cut me. And now I have to do something. However, I have enough energy because all this growth produced a lot of energy. And it explodes and builds more buds than necessary. It overreacts everywhere. Okay. Now, since we are cutting our hedge every year, sometimes two times every year. For 30 years, we cut it every year. We have an enormous number of buds, superfluous buds. There's endless, many, many, many buds. And this is why a hedge becomes so dense. And that's exactly the opposite of pinching. Pinching is when it comes out, you cut it off. And hedge pruning means you let it grow much longer than you think until it's very ugly. And then you cut back. And you say, well, what's the difference? Well, the difference is that it gets very dense. Okay. And this is why my hedge pruning method works. But it confuses people because they think then everything will look like a hedge. No, that's not what hedge. I want the massive ramification to have many more shoots than I need. So I can only make a good tree if I have a choice. If there are many, many shoots, then I can choose which one I keep and which ones I don't keep. But the normal problem in bonsai is that there's not enough foliage. There's not enough branches. This melts together. Yes. That's true. I don't like it. But as I said, you have to live with it. Not just whole. I think that this whole will disappear in 20 years. It will be completely good. So it will look much more powerful here. And also it will have better shape. Maybe it will be better. We are looking for these trees in nature. Very often you see on a tree, on a collective tree, you see that there is one part of a tree and the second part of a tree and they look like they are just not the same, but the cousins. And it's exactly like they are fusing together. So you have one old tree and the new tree is growing and it's fusing with them. And you see it a lot of times on oriental. They do it all the time. They get some relief here. Okay, Andrea, you spent quite some time working on this tree. We have discussed it before. Now we are much smarter because the tree is sort of finished. Can you tell us what exactly you did? Why you did it? And how do you see the future of that tree? This tree is now, let's say, finished. For this stage, I think it's fine. Some branches are a bit longer than I want to be longer. But this is because of the demo and because in this stage I want that I have maybe some branch more, maybe more than I need in the future. Through the time, I will remove some of them. I will make it shorter. In the future, also, next repotting, tree will be tilted like this. And this will be probably the front, something like this. Now it's a bit too triangular. But in the future, I want a bit more round crown. Now I want that these lower branches become thicker. So I want them a bit longer because all energy will go up. So this one, I want to be longer and thicker. But later, through the time, it will be more round, not so like a triangle. And also, I will bring more moving in the branches, but extreme moving by the cutting. By the cutting, I get kind of moving that I cannot get with the wire. It looks more natural and more aggressive and more dynamic. So a combination of wire and the cutting, that's the way how I do design on broadleafs. Okay, now many people will notice that these long wires are kind of ugly. How do you feel about it? Well, they are now ugly, but later we will remove them. I don't have problem with the ugly wires. Do you think it will need to be here? So this trunk will stay in the position? Depends how it will grow. This part of the trunk gets lots of energy and it can be removed maybe on the end of this season. This one. Mostly all this wire goes away for maybe one month or one because vegetation starts. I know that this tree is healthy and for one month or maybe two all this wire goes. It will stay just this one. May I interfere? This is all true in your climate. My experience, and I have many of those at home, is that it takes much longer in my climate. Like this guy wire will probably be kept there for two years, regardless of whether it grows or not. And this wire will be left for at least one year. Next year in 12 months. So he's taking it off in one or two or three months in 12 months. That's the difference. So this is a huge advantage he is having time-wise. Here was some stump and maybe it could be a branch, but we remove it now. This part is much more cleaner. Moving of the lower part of the trunk is much more cleaner and you see that moving, nice moving. So it's smooth. Here was one straight branch. Unnecessary because all this tree has so much moving and flow. So if you see something straight, it just bothers you a lot. So we remove it. And it was going far to create very empty space there. So any solution to that? Here we put this in here. For many people, the bigger problem is that there we have a big wound. How do we protect that wound? How do you protect that wound? I don't protect wound. You don't? No, I never had any problem with that. So very often I remove big branches and they make big scars and I never had a problem. I never, never, never, never used this. Maybe because my climate is a bit more dry. Maybe. But from my experience, never. It has nothing to do with climate. It is common knowledge. 99% of all people would be very surprised to hear that we never ever protect anything. Never ever. Why is that? Well, go to nature. You have the hurricanes. You have the storm. You have the avalanche. Who in the world is going to glue all these? Nobody, nobody. So why are the trees not dying? Because the trees know exactly how to handle this themselves. But I don't fight this like a war. If you want to protect it, that's fine. But that's for your soul and that's for the tree. However, you have to also understand, which is very ironic, why would you plug something on it in order to protect it from decaying, right? Now it's from getting hollow and foul and from within and then the tree dies. People think so. Okay. So who is killing the tree? That's fungi, bacteria and some little critters, worms and stuff. Okay. So what sort of climate do they like? Microclimate. It must be moist, constant moist. It must be warm. It must be dark. How do you get this? You put something on it and that sounds like a joke, but what the whole world thinks they have to do is exactly doing the contrary of what they think. So you think, well, water, water says a lot of things. I have invented this at our high school, at our universities, of agriculture universities. Now the state of the art is no protection. But in the bonsai world, that causes a riot. Anyway, fun subject. So one more thing is that if you turn this tree a little bit like this, these trunks are very close to each other. It's not possible. If it's thinner, I would do something like that, put something that goes away, but it's probably not so possible. So it will stay like this and probably in, I don't know, in 10 years, this will be connected. It will be fused together. Maybe even in 20 years, this whole will disappear. It will be completely fused. Maybe it starts to happen with some of the orientals that I have in collection for a long time. If you want to avoid this, then you must be sure that the tree doesn't grow very well, meaning cutting off all the new shoots, et cetera, and then it will probably not happen. But I would, and if you'd really bother the shoot, I would take a thin, long wedge, put it in here and hammer it in. And in two weeks, hammer more. And then you bet it will work somehow. But then it will not close. But you will forever have a flat sort of bark. So what would I do? Nothing. Okay, will it fuse? Yes, in 20 years. Well, in 20 years, I'm 102, so what? So what do you see in the future for this tree? If you look at it now as it is styled compared to the original previous day, where do you think the tree will move? What do you need to grow more? Where do you need some kind of extension? Well, like I said before, this is a kind of triple trunk. So this will be, of course, the main trunk. And it will be a bit more round. And I want lots of moving in the branches. Now it's a bit strict. Now it looks a bit too conservative. And later, I just want to put more dense in all these branches, in these lines. But I also want to avoid too dense ground. It will be more round, more moving, but not extremely dense. OK, I agree to you. I would also do that, because I would also like these branches which are dancing and never, ever straight. However, one member of the master class, Matija Triglav, he would have these straight things. He liked that. He likes that, which is radically different. So there's nothing wrong with that. Only it's very different. He plays with the following trick, that you have these wonderful moving trunks. And then as a contrast, you have these straight branches. And that sort of is shocking and gives some interest. Whereas we try to make the branches look very much like the trunks. And that looks more like genuine, but not so surprising. So who is right? Everybody's right. So you said that it's triple trunk. And there will be three crowns. In the future, if you let it grow unrestricted, most probably they will fuse this crown and will be joined together. What is your take on how this crown should be fused or separated to make some kind of image? In case you want to look like a natural tree, what's the crown design? It will be no obvious split. I will never split, never connect this in an obvious way. But somehow like this, like this, and like this. So it will be visible that, I don't know, this main crown will have the thickest branches. This one a bit thinner, and this one even less thinner. And this one will be the smallest, bigger, biggest. So this is the way how it will be. But it will be not, I think, so obvious. But on a subconscious level for the viewer, it will be nice, I think. One big mistake many people make is that they let this grow, let this grow. And then they have this ideal silhouette. You see, do you follow my thing? And that looks very nice, very nice. And at one point it looks like a hedge. So what you have to do is, you have to not style it like the ideal silhouette. You have to sort of feel like a cloud. You see, and the cloud is somehow less, but not exactly. So what you do is you do this, this, this, this, this. But overall, from far away, it looks like a nice silhouette, but not quite. And that gives us a good natural feeling if that's what you want. Well, in our school, that's what we want. We want this to look very natural. However, if you want more like a bonsai feeling, which is more artificial, more man-made, then you just do this hedge thing, okay? So it's totally up to you. I would personally not do it, but that doesn't mean that you cannot do it. For example, would you try to keep this space empty between those two crowns, small crowns? In the future, probably I will get some branches here, fill that space, but not too much, you know? In case you keep it empty, it will look like separate crowns, eh? Like two separate crowns. I would keep it a bit empty, but some... You see, this is a so-called negative space. Negative space is a term that Peter Adams brought into bonsai. This is where you can put your hand through, and then you can have a wonderful negative space. Sometimes it's a good idea to have this big hole and then some little branch dangling in there, like just as an accident. So not totally empty, or somebody fills it, but then it's... I would keep some empty spaces.