Bonsai Made Easy – DIY Hinoki Cypress
Number three project of our abc beginners series are these hinoki cyprus i’m really surprised how popular this species has been we sell these lovely little plants and not many people ever think of using it as a bonsai look at it it doesn’t look like a bonsai but with just a little bit of pruning you will be able to achieve a bonsai nine times out of ten when i work on these trees i can get a very credible shape simply by pruning with scissors again as i said there’s no magic or slight of hand let me pick any one let’s pick the little one on this side a tree with this shape we would just call a blob lovely foliage i love the hinokis because there’s got this lovely wall like foliage you know other conifers the foliage is so different but this one the foliage you see is like shells they call it shells can you see the shell like twist that you get with the foliage and when there are big trees they are really lovely so this is the kami cyprus obtusa nana gracilis that means the dwarf and graceful chemist obtusa so that’s the latin name and the latin meaning chemist obtusa nana gracialis dwarf and graceful hinoki cyprus now as with all these trees they are planted deep in this compost there must be a reason why these growers produce it like these these by the way are contract grown that means we get specialist growers to produce them by the thousands we buy them by the thousand i have to give them a contract of 2 000 trees to be able to get a good deal so these have been produced for us now just by removing the soil from the top of the trunk hey presto what have we got you can see the trunk and you can see the branches so it’s no longer a blob these are grown from cuttings by the way i produce these by cuttings i used to produce all so many on my own from cuttings but i leave the experts to do it what it takes me to produce in three four years these commercial growers can produce in one year so i don’t bother to produce them now i buy them as young plants and grow them on so i have cleared the soil and by clearing the soil around the trunk you can see the trunk it begins to look like a tree let me see if i can produce a credible bonsai just by pruning because as i said to you many of these trees uh can be done just by pruning now i know that i can keep using my falco sector but as you can see the blades are so big it’s going to create a bit of a problem so i will have to break my promise and go to the scissors these are bonsai scissors this shape of bonsai scissors is called the satsuki shears with the slightly bored blade like that long handle short blade called satsuki shears but call it what you will we call it just trimming shears now what i’m trying to do now is simply to create spaces between branches simply to create space between branches and once you created the space so that you can see individual branches it will look like a tree now i know this takes a bit of skill so if you feel less confident just be very careful my advice is to press the branches down so that you can see the space happening in fact this front is really from this side if you can see it now now these blobby bits i will just thin a little bit so that it doesn’t look so heavy some of you may ask what’s the point of growing it’s so strong and bushy and or cut it all off but we are trying to create a tree shape and in bonsai i always like to remind people but that there is this principle or what we call less is more classic zen principle don’t be greedy less is more the less you have the more beautiful it is but you can’t go to the extreme where you take away so much you end up with nothing nothing is no good less maybe more but nothing is no good let me look at the three from the front i’m going to see if i can produce it by simply pruning but if not i may have to do a little bit of wiring just to help it along okay so you can see i haven’t applied any wire at all and that does look like a tree let me just show you the one that has not been pruned at all that is what i started off with and this is what i’ve achieved simply by thinning out the tree simply by thinning it and if you put that in a pot i dare say it will look quite credible as a bonsai let me choose a suitable pot it seems that the best books are these very small ones i’ve not cutting any of the roots i’ve just taken off the excess soil and put it in this small bonsai pot doesn’t it look like a large tree doesn’t look like a large tree and this is what i started off with like that to that and i have not applied a single piece of wire all i’ve done is trimmed the tree now let me see what would happen if i did wire it okay if i were to wire it it would look much better so the thinnest wire can use is one millimeter wire now there are three branches at the base here one two three and i will wire the thr the three by applying the two branch principle so two brand principle means i wire two branches first and then let me show you what i do with the third one the three branch situation is very very common very common and a lot of people are perplexed what do i do with three branches oh panic you know it’s not a true branch situation can’t do it no nothing is impossible wiring with very fine wire like one millimeter sometimes you can use even 0.8 millimeter there’s a grid and you need very nimble fingers i don’t want to be sexist again but i find that ladies are usually very good at wiring because they have very nimble fingers and like ladies are able to do lovely embroidery because their fingers are so nimble so don’t be put off you know i remember years ago i used to teach at the national women’s institute college in denman’s in oxfordshire and there was a i think she was like 85 year old lady and she was the best student in the class because she had very nimble fingers and a very good sense of design so i have great respect for ladies who do bonsai because they are naturally gifted with being able to wire even in china where these commercial bonds are made many of the trees are produced by women very skillful with the hands so here is just a two branch situation the wire is simply holding the branches more horizontal that’s all i’m doing thinning it a little bit i can continue wiring some more if i wish the top is still quite dense many of these trees will end up it on our internet shop because many people asked to buy it the number of requests i get on our email please can i buy that tree peter worked on so i’ve just applied one here and then for the three branch situation the second pair and the third pair i’ve to use three small short pieces of wire and look at it if that doesn’t look like a tree i can thin it a little more the top i don’t know what you call that so this is what you can achieve from a blobby tree like this how simple is that how simple is that now like all my projects i’m going to work on two trees as the famous saying goes to show you that it is not a fluke let’s repeat the process and to repeat the process let me start all over again so that the repetition reinforces your learning process so we always begin by removing the soil from the top of the pot i don’t know about in other countries but this how i find a lot of the conifers that we buy or you can get in garden centers or nurseries or art trees come with a lot of soil on the top of the surface so by removing that you begin to see the trunk straight away there you can see the trunk and the branches and i will reveal the trunk more by thinning the branches somewhat and we will see this lower branch is too close to the top once i’ve removed that so i found a pair here i found a pair so let’s begin by wiring i know that you can produce it without wiring now let me just thin it first and then why so that can go down there the next one is too close let me remove this one so you’re creating spaces between the branches and then the next one is that one at the back this can be a back branch i’m pruning the long branches so that i get a conical shape so just by pruning you see that i have can you see just by pruning the branches i’ve not applied any water at all it begins to look like a tree so as i say how easy is that oh i know that some of you will say because it’s you who’s doing it but believe me it is simple be bold don’t be put off okay now if i were to put in a pot that would look quite credible as a bottom side but just to practice your wiring and to improve the tree we will just apply a little bit of wiring and see if it improves it so we can use this very thin wire one millimeter wire always find pairs of branches to wire together so you’re applying the two branch principle this reminds me of these drills that we used to do in all sorts of activities whether it’s dancing swimming whatever drill drill drill always doing drills practice makes perfect i’m looking at it from the front you’re looking at it from the back okay bear with me i will show you the finished product no magic tricks just simple honest wiring so i found a pair now both these branches are leaning to the same side but i’m going to make one go to the back see this one can go to the back as a back branch and the other one goes to this side so there you are can you see what i’ve done one’s gone to the back and one’s gone to this side like so i don’t think i need to wire more see just two pieces of wire change the shape of the tree completely so what was just a blob what we call a mr blobby has become a pretty little tree let me try a slightly different shaped pot but i think the smallest size pot seems to fit best pot is a bit too big a bit too big so let me take a small pot and do it i don’t want to show you the mess i’ve made on this table i’m going to have to sweep it all up so that when the staff come in the next day they won’t find a mess so there you are that’s done so the two hinokis are like so what started off as a big blob is like this so there you are that’s project number three so i hope you have learned so far from that there are going to be six projects all together and each of them are going to be different [Music] you
