My Dream Bonsai Pot
Stephan from Van Theuni 3D Printed Bonsai Pots has sent me my dream pot for my very first bonsai, my Ficus microcarpa that I started from a seed 28 years ago!
Today is the day that i’ll be getting my dream bonsai pot for my very first bonsai my ficus that i grew from a seed and it’s coming all the way from germany i got an email from stefan a couple of days ago saying the pot of being shipped and it’s on its way and it should come in today sometime today so i’ve just got to wait until the ups truck comes the tree is doing really well all that detailed work i did on the branch structure over the winter is starting to show the canopy’s growing out nice and evenly it’s getting a nice density to the branches and i’m going to let it grow probably till late spring and then i’ll give it another pruning the video on the new pot will be in two parts part one will be unboxing the pot and having a good look at it and part two will be planting my ficus into the new pot i can’t tell you how excited i am to see this new pot i haven’t seen any photographs of it since it was finished so i don’t know what it’ll look like it’ll be quite an unboxing video while i’m waiting for the ups truck to come i’m going to tackle my front pre-bonsai garden here so i’ll be making a video within a video so look for a separate video on printing the front garden up i finished my pre-bonsai garden here and after waiting all day for the ups truck to come it never did come the tracking showed it was coming that day right up until about 10 o’clock at night and then it changed to show it was coming after the weekend so that was a friday now it’s monday morning it is supposed to come today so today i have to stay up front to sign for it i’m going to be working on the truck there’s a package that must be for me i think that’s for me well the package came finally yeah that’s the right one so the ups van has arrived with my package here it is it looks safe and sound the box isn’t all caved in or anything so that’s good [Laughter] there goes ups i’ve got the box in the backyard here so the box looks undamaged which is good but you never know i uh i hope everything’s okay so yeah this is the exciting moment i’m going to open the box and see what the pot looks like i can’t wait this is so exciting all right here i go this will be the largest 3d printed bonsai pot that i’ve ever seen in my life so it should be quite exciting all right so i’m going to cut away all the tape here before i open the box i just want to say that this pot is a labor of love that i asked stefan how much would it cost if he made another one of these how much would he charge and he says i would never make another one there’s so much time in printing it and so much time in assembling and finishing it that it’s a one-of-a-kind pot so it makes it really really a special pot for my very first bonsai my ficus so thanks very much stefan it’s going to be awesome here we go let’s get it open now okay one more cut here the suspense is killing me i should have brought a knife out i brought scissors to a knife fight okay here we go this is tents stefan uses environmentally friendly packaging so that’s really nice thanks stefan okay we’re getting there we’re getting there okay i got another flap open another flap open i just got to move these pots here okay so this is going to lift out oh there’s a letter in here i’ll read you the letter the letter says hi nigel so finally the bonsai tray slash pot of your dreams is completed and if you’re reading this it made it all the way to canada i hope it suits you and you’ll have joy with it besides of course i hope the tree will grow healthy in it for many years so thanks stefan that’s awesome and now the moment we’ve all been waiting for i’ll have to get a container to put all these in i’ve moved the packing peanuts away from the first layer so underneath here is more packing peanuts so i’ll have to get those out oh and i think i can see the pot underneath there i think there’s something hard in there okay let’s get all these packing peanuts out of here i’m getting there i’m removing the airbags i’ve got a lot of the packing peanuts removed and now i can kind of see how big the pot is wow that’s amazing so i can lift the pot out and i think the tray is underneath it there and these look like maybe the pillars on the inside here so i’ll lift that out and then we’ll get rid of the box and have a look at it all right here it comes out of the box wow that’s the pot okay and i’ll get the tray out which is under here there’s the tray that goes underneath okay wow this is awesome okay big deep breath here we go this is the moment i’ve been waiting for the actual unwrapping of the pot i can smell varnish okay it’s getting very close now okay so let’s let’s remove those are definitely the columns let’s remove those there’s four of them and then i think there’s a set of pins in here to assemble it with so i will uh i’m going to set up the base first i’ll set up the base here first and then we can put the columns on it and then assemble the top of the pot on wow this thing’s really large it’s amazing okay so that’s the top of the tray okay here we are okay out comes the bottom tray wow so the idea of the bottom tray he’s got a grippy foam on the bottom is that i’ll plant either moss or like a gravel ground cover with maybe tufts of moss underneath to give kind of a you know a realistic landscape underneath the pot so that looks awesome wow that’s huge amazing okay so let’s get the feet open now and we’ll get this assembled okay so there we are so there’s the pattern on two sides so that goes towards the outside so this one would go right here like that and i think there’s pins to hold the table on the top but i think these are designed just to sit in place so you can lift it up from the tray which is nice because it allows you to get to access to the tray uh and plant the moss and stuff underneath i found on my other ones that if the top was glued on it was hard to get underneath they tend to grow roots down out of the drainage holes and it’s a lot easier if you can take it apart so here’s number two so this one will go like that like that i think these are the pins in here to hold the top on so let’s have a look at these pins first there they are so these pins will go through here and i think it’ll be this direction i believe we’ll see we’ll see once we get everything unwrapped if there’s a varnish on here it must be a matte varnish because it’s not shiny which is good it’ll look more like cement here’s the final corner wow it’s out of a large that’s gonna be awesome okay let’s get the pot open so first i’ll take all the packing peanuts out of the pot and then we’ll unwrap it i’m not even sure i have these right okay i’m going to take the wrapping off the pot i’ll have to figure out how they go up into the pot there here goes here it is oh look at that that’s beautiful wow there’s stefan symbol in the middle the drainage hole that’s really cool holy that turned out so nice wow so there’s tie downs in the middle of the pot here little raised ones here that you can loop a wire through so you don’t have wire going underneath the pot so that’s really clever okay i’ve got to figure out how these how these go on and maybe just that i haven’t got them lined up oh that one’s dropped in that one dropped in that one dropped in and that one dropped in there it is wow is that ever cool that’s beautiful just amazing wow that is a bonsai pot so cool so these pens i can see the holes on the outside here see them here where here so these pins must go in like that so that locks the pot down to the feet let me get my other ones in here here’s pin number two going in that’s in pin number three [Applause] is in and pin number four perfect so now you can lift it up with the feet on you can lift it away from the base and put it back so that’s really nice wow is that ever awesome looks fantastic you’d swear it was made of cement that’s going to be amazing with the tree in here i’ll get the tree out and we’ll have a look at it see how it looks with the tree kind of positioned behind it i deliberately size the pot a little larger than the tree needs at the moment because i’m kind of designing it for five to ten years in the future so as the tree grows it’ll kind of be in proportion with the pot more if i made it the perfect size now i wouldn’t be able to use the pot in like five or ten years because the tree would probably outgrow the pot now you can’t keep them you know you can keep the ficus to a certain size but it takes a lot of pruning and yeah it would uh you’d have to do a lot of hard pruning to both the roots and the top of the tree to keep it you know to a certain size to fit in this pot for the rest of its life which i’m hoping to do i uh i hope i can uh keep it in this pot for you know the rest of my lifetime anyway so wow that looks great holy amazing just amazing little details here scrolls yeah it turned out really nice amazing thanks stefan this is awesome it’s just amazing wow it’s giant i’ve never seen a 3d printed pot this large before i think it’s made in one two three four five six sections so each section is about this size yeah that looks great all right i’ll get off the tree and we’ll see what it looks like kind of a mock-up all right let’s see how the tree goes i wonder if the pot would fit inside here no not quite very close though that’s amazing so yeah i’m going a little bit larger on length but width is about the same which is good that’s going to be perfect um yeah i’ll try and put something in the bottom of the pot so i can space the tree up a bit i need maybe maybe a 2×4 or something i put some blocks in the pot so i’ll try the tree on top now okay that’s good sting there let’s have a look at it now here’s a look at the tree mocked up so it’s a pot within a pot here so the pot looks quite large compared to the tree at the moment so i’ve definitely got room to grow the tree larger which i do want to do i want to grow that canopy larger and at the same time the trunk will grow larger and everything will grow a little bit larger so that’ll be nice yeah it’s uh i think it’s a good-looking pot i think that’s a a great pot to go with this tree it’s gonna look really nice uh when it’s all planted and the tree grows to the size of the pot it’ll look just perfect like i said in probably i don’t know maybe even you know five years it all depends how quickly the tree grows um yeah i i think it’s gonna look fantastic though a perfect size pot for it it’s a perfect pot i think for a ficus tree too it’ll be interesting over the years to see how the patina develops on this pot when stefan was finishing the pot he he was wondering how much patina he should put on the pot because he wanted to leave room for some natural patina on it so i think it’s it’s just right it’s got just the right amount of patina for now and then i think in the future it’ll develop its own probably algae and water stains and yeah it’ll age over the years quite nicely i think in part two of this video i will be repotting the tree into the new pot and i think in about an hour the sunlight will be hitting the bench here and i’ll get some photographs of it in the sun the sun is just starting to hit the tree now so i think it’s going to grow really well in this pot it’s a good sort of deep pot for it to grow in there’s more room for the roots to develop i think it’ll grow into this pot you know quite quickly so we’ll have a look at the pot in the sunlight when the sun starts hitting the bench and see how it looks with all the cool shadows on it i told stefan how excited i was to get the pot in the mail i said it’s like getting the mona lisa mailed to you and uh yeah i’m really happy with it it’s fantastic let’s fly in now and have a look at all the details of the pot the mona lisa of pots [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] the pot looks like it’s made of concrete and would be really heavy but it’s actually very light which is amazing so stay tuned for part two of this series where i’ll be potting my ficus microcarpa into the new pot my dream pot for my very first bonsai my ficus micro carpet that i grew from a seed has gone from a 3d rendering to reality thanks to stefan i’ll put a link to his website in the description below that’s all for today i’m nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone
