In this video I work on a famous forest group that appears in the Bonsai Masterclass book.
I would say these trees must be at least 50 years old now so you can see 50 years some of them are still very very thin so when you say that trees you know you can’t tell the age the thickness of the trunk is no indication as to how old they are now let me go to the other book because in bonsai secrets there’s also a picture of it now these pictures are quite different this picture because the book was written in 19 no it was written in year 2001
Hi there you must be wondering where i am this is our office and i’ve been doing a lot of videoing today so i’ve done five hours of videoing during the daytime in my greenhouse and as if that was not enough it’s now seven o’clock in the evening and before i have my dinner i thought i’d use the opportunity to come here into the office when all the staff have gone and i can work in the warm and do a few projects february is a very busy time of the year so there’s a lot to do so the endless videos that i’ve made and you’re going to see it over the next few weeks or months let me begin by saying a big thank you to some of my fans now this is a beautiful hawaiian shirt and it’s a french connection which is a very very posh brand and it was sent to me by someone in the uk in fact he was also a civil servant like what i was and he sent it because he was very grateful to see all the videos that i keep putting out i’m not saying this is a plug to us for shirts but there is so much love in the community that i have to acknowledge it and then shortly after that within the next day i had another lovely present and this present is from a german fan all the way from germany such beautiful writing look at it beautiful handwriting and he sent me a lovely falco secateurs because he knows that i love the falco and there’s a little really hat to go with it as well so thank you very much to all my fans for showing so much love i really enjoy making the videos and if it was not for you fans i would not be doing it at all so what have i got for you today this was a group that i may have shown you before and i touched on it very briefly when i was looking at some of the other conifers that were in my care it belongs to a customer but this famous group was made by john naca when he came to the uk i think it was 1984 or 86 on his second visit he went to scotland and he made this group there i’m just going to pause the camera for a while because i’m going to bring some of my books to show you the picture of this tree when it was originally done so bear with me for a second while i just go and find the book so i have two of my books here and i’m sure those of you who are familiar with my books will recognize this one bonsai master class was published in 1987 and i wrote it in 1986 which is 35 years ago maybe going on 36 and that is my favorite book it is also in bonsai secrets this is the french version of bonsai secrets i can show you the english version but this is the french version because all my books are in seven or eight languages let’s get to bonsai master class first and if i open the page page 24 bonsai master class this photograph was taken when i came to herons in 1986 and you can see that group there that was the group in 1986 when i had just acquired it so this is what it looks like today i’m going to work on it and this was what the group looked like in 1986 further on in the book there’s another picture let me just show you and this is the picture of that group first and group plantings so this is how it looked and as you all know because trees keep growing as they grow they change considerably nothing ever remains the same it’s like us human beings as we age and as time goes by our looks change and so do bonsai all these bonsai change i would say that this tree has grown about at least another maybe 20 to 30 centimeters taller and the trees have thickened much more so this if it was made in 1984 or 86 it was made as a group nearly 37 years ago so the trees because they were already that size 37 years ago i would say these trees must be at least 50 years old now so you can see 50 years some of them are still very very thin so when you say that trees you know you can’t tell the age the thickness of the trunk is no indication as to how old they are now let me go to the other book because in bonsai secrets there’s also a picture of it now these pictures are quite different this picture because the book was written in 19 no it was written in year 2001 i remember writing this book when the famous twin tiles incident took place and already the group is looking quite different from what it did when it was first made if i can open that picture again if you compare the two look at that one that was when it was just made in 1984-86 and this was it in the year 2000 so already the shape of the tree had changed quite a bit this picture here is before i trimmed it and this was when i had given it a slight trim so i keep maintaining this tree but because this tree was sold to a cane collector he has somewhat neglected the tree i don’t like pestering them to keep working on it because it costs money to keep spending hours and hours this tree has been on the nursery for the past six months because i wanted to bring it back to health so it’s already looking much greener much healthier as you can see all the foliage is looking very nice but there’s quite a lot of dead in it and one or two dead trees as well so we will deal with all of them so at the moment i can see there are two dead trees and three maybe two dead trees so that will leave four and three seven and three ten maybe nine trees could be left so originally the tree had three to five five and three eight eight and uh eight and four twelve i think it had 13 trees if i remember correctly there were 12 trees so even john knocker made a group of 12 trees so you know when you think that you should always have the odd number here there are 12 trees in this group originally so i will start working on it the first thing i will do because i’ve got the camera in my hand i will show you there’s quite a lot of debris here a lot of dead twigs so the first thing to do is to clear the debris nothing special so this is going to take time and i’m just going to show you a little bit of me cutting the debris out it’s not often that i work from behind the tree i always work from the front i know it’s annoying for some of my viewers because they always see my back but that is what i see and hopefully that is also what you see so i don’t think it’s that silly to be working from the front all the time so let’s see what happens so all i’m going to do is remove these dead twigs twigs die because of lack of light also maybe not enough feed or fertilizer so this is going to be a tedious process just removing the dead trees they serve no purpose now so they have to be removed i’m just going to show you a little bit of this i don’t want to do too much because there will be a lot to do and i don’t want to just spend time showing you how to remove dead twigs when these trees are made the pads are usually very flat but over a period of time the pads get big and they spring upwards so that’s why they look so dense so as i say all i’m doing now is simply removing dead trees and there are as i said certainly two trees which are completely dead this one is completely dead i just cut it from the root when you plant forest groups you will always get the odd tree that dies because when you plant a group there are some trees which are very vigorous and the vigorous ones take over and they don’t let the little ones grow so you notice here that these little ones have died because the big ones have become too vigorous and they’ve taken all the nourishment from it there are two more which are struggling to live i won’t take them out because with a bit of heavy feeding i may be able to revive them usually when customers send these trees to me i insist on keeping it with me for at least a year because they need at least a year to revive there’s no good me working on it and send it straight back because if i do that all the good work that i have done will come to nothing if they don’t look after it again so i want to make sure it really revives and picks up the fact that it’s reviving and doing so strongly i will just bring the camera close you will see that some of the shoots are really really strong you look at those pointy bits you see that is sign of strong growth so keeping it just for three months has produced so many new strong shoots and the color certainly has picked up this variety of juniper although is a chinese juniper it was made from the famous blaz juniper those of you who are in europe may have heard about blows it is a very easily available or certainly in the 60s 70s and 80s it was a very popular conifer juniper that was sold for conifer growers and there used to be a lot of people grew these dwarf alpines and conifers and bloss was one of the varieties which were a favorite among conifer collectors but nowadays you will not be able to get blows for the love of money because it is suddenly become rare and simply because no one is interested in growing conifers anymore changes of fashion whims of fashion and you get this situation where a plant which may have been popular 20 30 years ago you suddenly cannot get it anymore fortunately we propagate quite a few blowers ourselves from cuttings so we do have blowers junipers for sale those of you who watch on my youtube videos will have seen the blogs that i use and although they have that funny vast shape inverse v when they are wired up they become very nice bonsai so i will now not bore you by doing more cleaning up let me clean the tree completely and then i will show you what i have done during the next hour right i think i better show you what i’ve been doing i have removed quite a few dead branches i will show you closer in a minute what has been happening look at all those dead branches coming out in just a space of a few minutes i’ve taken out quite a few dead branches now there are some other branches which don’t have a lot of foliage they are not dead but look at this one this hasn’t got a lot of foliage left and this one also i had removed it wasn’t completely dead i’ve made a bit of gin there so these ones because they’re not looking so good i may just keep it and see if it does revive but i’m going to wire this so that these branches come down so if they come down they will take the place of these branches so like this one for instance i’m going to cut it off and make a gin with it so even in nature as trees get older they do break off with the storms and nature blows them down and break some weight of snow or whatever so getting gins in these trees is not unnatural by the way although these are junipers what we’ve used the juniper here is to create an image of the pine see now these branches are springing up so i will now just make a gin with this one i’ll just show you what i do i cut them off look what i’m cutting off and then i make a sloping cut there and then tear the branch backwards take it back like that to make the gin so as i was saying these junipers are used here to create the image of pine trees so this is really like a pine forest that the late john locker has made when making this group so junipers are very popular for creating what we would call pine image so now that i’ve removed these three lower bounds i’m going to wire the branches down like that and that will fill the space so this is the general plan for most of these branches so i’m lifting the crown as it were getting rid of one two three quite major branches but they’re not much good now so i’ve removed those and i’m going to wire these down so i will continue taking the dead ones or the useless ones out there’s a lot of dead there each tree is going to take me at least an hour to work on so you can imagine this is going to take about 8-10 hours of work so i’ll be spending quite a few evenings just working on this i know that i don’t charge the customer enough for it because the amount of work i’ve done on this tree if i was going to charge my normal time would be astronomical because i love what i’m doing the you know monetary value doesn’t really come into it so this is what i’ve shown you and when i’ve done some wiring and proceeded to accomplish a little more i will show it to you again so this is where we’ve got to so far well i just show you what i’ve done i’ve worked about one hour and look at the debris i’ve taken out and i’m sure i’m going to be taking out about 10 times the amount of debris from this group if we look at this tall tree the tall tree in this case is the principal tree and it’s on the left this is a very strange group because the group consists of two little subgroups one group on the left and one group on the right so if we look at this main tree on the left hand side i will just show you what i have done so far and simply by pouring some of these dead branches out you can see that the form of that left hand side tree is beginning to appear i’m going to work much more on that left hand tree just to show you the difference between working on a tree and not working on a tree see this side has not been touched yet the right hand side so it’s very dense so just by thinning out the branches it begins to look like a magnificent big tree uh once more so i’m just going to do some wiring i haven’t done any wiring so far i will begin to do some wiring so i’m going to do a bit of wiring now just to show you the general idea as to what i’m trying to achieve so i’m now using this is four mil wire might even be four and a half i think so i’m gonna wire these two branches out when you think that this tree was worked on uh 1984 37 years ago by the great john la naca who is now up in the clouds what a great honor just to touch this tree i did a workshop with john mark as well those of you who got my first book you see a drawing he did of that particular tree i still have it i need to re redesign it because all these trees as they age they change and shape they change in style and they have to be rejuvenated from time to time so no tree ever stays the same throughout its bonsai career it’s like human beings we have to reinvent ourselves so this is coming down because i lost the lower branches that’s the reason why i’m bending the branches down these branches have been lost so i’m taking it down so that it fills the space and also it’s quite appropriate because as trees get old the branches hang down because of the weight of the branches so in nature you find this phenomenon taking place branch is hanging on absolutely natural there’s so many dead little trees the more you look the more you find a lot of work involved i must say i’m going to enjoy this very much i’m going to keep this tree for quite a while because i really want to resuscitate it to its former glory or taking a new shape i’m sure that dear pastor john mark will approve of what i’m doing because i’m self videoing i feel that although i’m talking to myself i know that i’m not alone because the response i get from my viewers makes me feel that you are just next to me so it’s a weird feeling but so nice lovely feeling although i’m working on my own and talking to myself i’m not really talking to myself i’m talking to you and i hope you feel that too [Music] now that is a big branch is hiding the tree at the back so i might have to take that one out and certainly shorten it very considerably so let me just show you what i mean if you can look at this one here this branch here is hiding the tree at the back so i’m going to shorten it by cutting it there so i’m going to take that out all that comes out so that this tree is exposed and this comes down so i’ve thinned that quite considerably so the whole tree is going to be thin the whole group every tree is going to be thinned out so you’ll appreciate it when i’ve done all of it so that’s what i’ll do so far that’s 15 minutes gone just on a couple of branches right i’ve worked on this tree for about two and a half hours and it’s nearly 11 o’clock at night and i’m still working i thought i’d stop by and show you what i’ve done so far let me just show you the debris that is on the table here can you see what a lot of stuff i cut out all that has been cut out mainly from the lower branches here i’m going to make those into gins i beg the trunk because it was very dense if you have a quick comparison between the right hand side as you can see it’s absolutely heavy and dense and on the left hand side this tree the main tree is beginning to take shape and it really looks like a pine i’ve done these lower branches here i haven’t finished the top yet the top i’m going to thin a little more and wire the branches down also this big lump at the back that is very heavy that i’m going to thin so i’m going to work on the left hand side first i thought i’d show you part of the way through in case you think i’m doing sleight of hand i’m not doing sleight of hand it’s just that i didn’t want to take up about five six seven hours just to show you this one project i will just show you snatches of it so i’m going to work on the apex of that principle tree and then you will see the effect so you can already see a contrast between left and the right the right is absolutely heavy and dense whereas the left hand side is getting more like proper trees that you would see growing in the wild or in a pine forest so there we go i hope you are enjoying what is being transformed so i thought i’d show you what i’ve done in the last 15 minutes i’m coming back to this tree and now that central tree or the main tree on the left that has been completed i would say it’s complete and it’s much much thinner than it was originally and that’s only one tree done i’m now going to work on the tree right at the back i haven’t touched any of these trees on the right hand side this tree at the back here you can see how dense it is this one i’m now going to work on this one and then gradually progress so i’ve only done one of the how many trees are there three three six and four ten trees i’ve only done one of ten and that’s taken me the best part of about three hours so far three hours i’ve worked on it just one tree so this group is going to take a lot of time to work on but it’s coming along you can see the results so i’ve been working virtually non-stop from five o’clock in the evening till half past level it’s nearly half past 11 and to show you i’m not lying i’m going to show you the cloud almost half past 11 and that is the clock there 20 past 11. so i’ve been working for six and a quarter or six hours 20 minutes to be absolutely precise and i’ve only done just about half the group of this famous john docker forest or group so you can see the difference between the left hand side and the right hand side the right hand side i haven’t worked yet so that has yet to be done so i’ve introduced spaces between the branches and this in fact is how you would see pines growing in the british countryside a lot of the pine forests are like that and this is the image i’m trying to recreate now on the left on the right hand side there is a very big problem here there’s this this big branch which is quite low down i’m not sure whether to take it off or to leave it and i will probably take it off because i can bring some of the branches from the crown to hang downwards it’s more important to show the trunks of the trees as with all forest groups unless you show the trunks you don’t really get a feel for what a real forest would look like so you see now the difference between the left hand side and the right hand side and i’m now going to proceed maybe tomorrow it’s too late now i haven’t had my dinner yet and i’m going to work on the right hand side tomorrow evening and hopefully in two evenings which is about 12 or 14 hours work i reckon i will have thin the tree out and then i will put it back in probably a larger pot and it will be more or less restored to not its former glory but a different shape so this shape has evolved over the last 90 days for 37 years this group has existed for 37 years so you will see the transformation isn’t it nice to know that this uh tree bonsai live longer than people there you go so this is halfway done and this is halfway point so i’m here again you can see me hiding behind the trees last night i worked from five o’clock in the evening to 11 20 last night six hours 20 minutes with just a few coffee breaks and i didn’t have my dinner till 12 midnight so this has proved to be such an exciting project that i couldn’t uh stop doing it so you can see that on the left hand side i finished the left hand side i’ve tidied it up and now i’m going to deal with the ones the trees on the other side the right hand side so this is still quite a jumble and a mess and the whole object is to thin it out so that i can show the branches so they look like trees i hope you will agree that the trees on the left hand side of the picture they look like real pine trees that you would find growing in a pine forest but this is a bit of a jumble so let’s deal with it so it’s just a question of patience and there’s no great problem and i like to deal with one tree at a time difficult to work from the back as i said so i will have to find some means of accessing the tree this way i don’t know whether you can see what i’m doing i’ll try and show you as i go along see the tree i’m working on is the one on the far left of the picture so it’s this tree that i’m going to work on this tree so let’s see if i can video it with me working on it as i mentioned to you a lot of these branches have grown upwards so the flat pad effect is no longer visible the first thing i always do is there is so much dead because this poetry has been there’s a lot of fine detail work i think the best analogy is like a jeweler you know a jeweler dealing with a lot of fine detail even cleaning the debris takes time all these dead little stubs every one of them has to be taken out carefully with the branch prunus i’m pouring close to the original branch or trunk anything dead i take out and this will be wiped flat and because it’s such an old group i’m very conscious that many of these old branches are going to end up as being gins and the overall effect of course is to raise the lower branches so that the structure is more open at the base bottom and most of the branches are now at the top and this is exactly how you find pine trees behaving in nature [Music] of course with this lockdown i can’t even get a camera person to come close and photograph in detail what i’m doing ideally that would have been nice if you could see it all but no matter we can manage without [Music] i’ve learned to be bold even i have to learn to be bold by cutting out quite a few branches you know there’s always the uh fear that because the branches were there originally should i be removing it well the answer is yeah don’t be afraid i have to say to myself because what was designed 37 years ago is not quite relevant today because the tree has changed and as i say a lot of these life lessons you get you know the way trees behave the way situations change they are all like what we experience enough [Music] so because things have changed we should not be afraid to change it so this one i can change it take it out so i’m thinning first and then i will wash so there’s a branch there i can take that branch out i’m being quite ruthless i will show you the amount of debris that i’ve taken out you can’t see it but if i just show you the amount that we took off yesterday and today i will show you in a minute that’s the sort of thing i’ve been taking on when the whole project is over i will show you all the debris that has been removed from the tree and believe you me it is quite a lot parents are always saying oh don’t do this don’t do that you’ll make a mistake i now realize that making mistakes allowing people to make mistakes is probably the best learning tool so i’m now going to bring the camera near you remember that i was thinning out the trees on the right hand side of the picture and after just about 20 minute work you can see how thin i’ve made the tree on the far right compared to the one in the center you see how dense that one is that is very very dense and you see how light and airy this one is so it’s just going into the structure and thinning it out so that it looks like a proper tree rather than just a blob mr blobby as we call it so you see the one on the extreme left has been done last night this one on the far right i’ve just done 20 minutes ago and now i’m going to tackle the one right in the middle this one so i just go in there and as uh tin it as i go along so bear with me as i switch the camera again so i hope you can get a view this is what i’m going to tackle this portion here this very thick and dense part so this slow branch i couldn’t decide whether to take off or not but i’ll leave it for the time being so it’s this one that we’re going to deal with [Applause] as i said there are a lot of dead shoots or very weak shoots over the years just the lack of light has meant that you do get quite a bit of die back so these are the sort of shoots i’m taking out it can be a bit daunting if you’re not used to doing it but believe you me it will be okay so there’s another bit you see how weak this shoot is this can come out and of course it’s not always the weak shoots i sometimes take out quite a healthy shoot like that’s a healthy shoot take it out because there’s too much of it right i’m not going to switch the camera off because i just want to show you that i’m actually working on it there is no magic no slight of hand it’s just tedious work but of course i shouldn’t give the impression that it’s tedious and boring i’m really enjoying it i keep saying to myself that it’s hard to believe that this was done by the great john knox and now i’m working on it and i’m sure he would approve of what i’m doing and i’m sure he would approve in the same way that i say that there’s no right no wrong way as long as the end result looks correct or look good that’s all that matters so there’s another piece these are the sort of pieces i’m removing i always keep coming back to the front of the group to see what i’m doing in case i’m doing anything wrong see another large chunk see that’s the amount i’m taking out from each branch and then when i’ve removed it i’m going to place it in position so that i got to visualize if i wire it what will it look like you know if i wire it down like that what would it look like that’s what i’m doing all the time so these two branches need to be wired down so let me use some wire i think that will need like three and a half millimeter wire because that branch is pretty thick i’m fairly sure that given another year and with heavy feeding this tree will resuscitate and rejuvenate because light only gets to the top of the tree you can see why the top is so dense and lush whereas further down where it doesn’t get light it is weak so by thinning it i hope we will be able to let light into the tree i’m not just going to show you what i’ve done to this dense tree that tree i have thinned it it might not look as if i’ve done it but because there is a very dense tree at the back you can’t see it clearly but you can see i have thin this one this is the tree that i have thinned this is the one that now needs thinning this is very dense this is so dense you can’t see anything and you see the entry how i’ve separated the branches to show the individual branches i now need to do the same thing with this last remaining tree this last remaining tree is quite a sturdy tree with a lot of branches and loads of foliage and look at it it’s covered in juniper berries covered in juniper berries so it’s obviously a very healthy tree but i think the entire group looks quite healthy if i can just walk around with the camera you can now just see the effect of it coming on okay so i’m now going to work on the back of this tree this tree and i will try and show you what i’m going to do maybe if i put the tree the trouble is because the view is from this side whatever i prune has to look good from the front side this tree hasn’t got a front and a back it has front and back i mean the back is not really the side that you would view see this is the back this is not so interesting the front is really the other side so we have to concentrate on making the view look right from the other side so this is that big tree that i’m going to thin so that it is now uh oh it now should look in keeping with the character of the rest of the trees so i will stop the camera and go so i’m now going to home in on this tree so you can see how dense this tree is so it has the first branches there and then there is a whole cluster of quite thick branches really thick branches look at that one that is absolutely thick and there’s more there’s more so that is how cluttered the tree is so we’ve got to thin that out to make it look more presentable and i dare say one or two branches may have to come out so let’s begin so let me show you what i’m thinking now this is a very thick old branch and i know it helps to form the triangle i have to consider very seriously whether that is too heavy a branch i might just reduce this to a gin the low branch is not too heavy but this branch is exceedingly heavy so what do i do hard decision to make i will probably cut out that bit i’ll show you what i’m cutting look at that i’ve cut all that out massive cut so the object of the exercise at the moment is to thin the tree out a bit it is far too dense i will progressively thin it out so that i’m not making too drastic a decision as long as there are live shoots at the end they act as what we call the sap drawers sap sap and draw that means the sap is pulled out through the branch into the foliage at the end and by pulling the set through the rest of the branch becomes healthy and turgid if you were to remove all the foliage and this applies to all evergreens whether they’re pines or junipers that branch will die so you always need to leave some light foliage at the end to growing the sap forward that is what we call the sap drawers now there’s another branch which is quite low there i think that can go i don’t need that i might just make this into a gin since there are few gins on this tree so i’ve taken out that much so quite a lot of large chunks are removed mind you these are just small gins and typical of pines if you go to the countryside the next time i go towards kent there’s some huge pines there’s a place called leeds castle nothing to do with leeds it’s leeds castle is in kent and they have some beautiful old points which are literally like the pines you see here and that is the type of pine image that you get throughout the south of england i don’t know about scotland but certainly in the south of england the pines grow in this lanky fashion i keep cutting wiring and then going back to see what it looks like now i can see straight away that this branch here i don’t know whether you can see it i don’t know whether i need this one or not let me thin it to begin with and see what happens so just to see the progress i’m going to home in and show you you can now see the branch structure quite clearly on this tree but the top is still dense so that’s what i’m still working on so you’re beginning to be able to see through the tree as they say visualizing little birds flying through the branches is what we are aiming for if it is too dense then it looks a mess so we will so you can now see i’ve thinned all the trees out so the entire structure is visible you can see the branches the little birds can fly through and this is as much as i can do if the film editor can compare it with what it was originally you will get a good idea as to how much work i’ve done and because i’m almost at the end i can’t resist cleaning the bark as well so to recap when you clean juniper bark we always use a pen knife first to get all the flaky bits off some people just use the wire brush straight away but if you remove the bark with a pen knife then you save quite a bit of the work with the brush although you can use the brush straight on just try it and see what works for you now the brush i use is just an ordinary suede brush i use this for cleaning suede shoes so you can use this and there are of course the proper brass brushes which are produced for cleaning the bark of trunks they’re very good but since i can’t find that one i’m just using this one so this is what i’m going to do the rest of the evening so so so i’m just showing you the basic you know things i do cleaning the bark again very boring process no point just showing you this endlessly it is what we call elbow grease the more you polish the tree the redder the trunk gets i’m going to show you in a minute what lies underneath the trunk i can assure you that it is very very red inside unfortunately because i’m in the office here i’m not going to use water but i really should spray it and clean it so i may take it back out to the nursery tomorrow morning to clean it with water so if i can just stop the camera and bring the camera near i will show you just by a minute of brushing the pink bark is beginning to appear so let me home in can you see that lovely pink color that is what you get underneath the bark from just brushing it if you don’t brush it it is just full of algae and grime so while we’re here let’s take a close look at the entire structure of the tree so i brought this john knocker group into our back greenhouse or our workshop and we’re looking at from the front and in full daylight i was videoing in the office which was under dark conditions with artificial light it doesn’t look quite the same and i chose a mica pot because this is the only part that actually fits it the ceramic pot is going to be too shallow for it so as you can see again i grew it in moss to strengthen the roots and i haven’t really looked underneath but you see the six months in the mosque and all these roots have taken and they’ve done very well so i wouldn’t touch it at all and because there’s moss i don’t even have to prepare the pot i’m just going to put it in here for another three or six months to make sure it recovers fully there you are what a good judgment i knew it would fit the spot so that’s all i need to do i may just put a tiny little bit of soil on the edges but apart from that i don’t really have to do anything so all i’m going to uh do is to brush the trunks up and when the trunks are brushed it should look okay i like the way it leans slightly to that side so we just clean the surface and brush the trunks so here we are this is the revamped group that the late john knocker made in i think it was 1984-86 i can’t remember the exact year so let’s show you remind you when i started this project i showed you the picture from bonsai master class this book as i said was written in 1986 published in 1987 and this picture was taken on the nursery at herons when we had the old greenhouses and this is the group here this is the group if you can home in on that book picture and compare it with this it is quite different it is quite different and i also showed you from my other book this is there are two versions of this this is the french version i told you i don’t know why they changed the title because this title shouldn’t be like that the original title for the readers digest was bonsai secrets and this by the way is the first ever copy of bonsai secrets presented to me on the 30th of september 2005. i wrote this book in 2002 so this photograph here there are two photographs in fact this one here was before i pruned it you see how dense it was dense and these trees on the right were not that tall you see these trees have grown a lot since then much much more it’s almost up to the height of that and so this is before thinning and i thinned it out there so that’s the picture of it thinned and that’s the original pot and this tree has taken on a completely different look so it has transformed itself over the last 35 or 36 years i don’t know how many years it is since this was made so there you are i hope you’ve enjoyed this project i’ve really enjoyed making it or redoing it and it has so much history and that’s what makes this interesting so have a good look at it [Music] you
