In this video I prune a bonsai maple forest.
so this is a very famous mountain maple group of mine i must say that i did not make it this was purchased back in 1993 from japan from a very famous nursery in japan i won’t mention which nursery but it was purchased from japan and it was only half the height it was a very small group you can see that the original pot was just this size i put it in a much bigger pot over the years but as you can see it’s got a large number of trees i’ve lost count but some of the trees did die if you home in you see there’s a dead tree there which i cut out and some of these trees have also died so i cut out but there are still quite a few trees left in this group and they’re all alive as a quick count there are four four and two six six and 5 11 11 and 3 14 14 and 4 18 18 and 4 22 22 trees now i’ve spoken about numbers on many many occasions and i’m not first as to whether it is an odd or even number in my bonsai master class book which i wrote in 1986 published in 87 i’ve always said that once you get over the number seven the i cannot distinguish between odd and even numbers so numbers absolutely not important so it looks a magnificent group but as with all maples they’re so vigorous look at it this is just i would say maybe three weeks growth and they were growing in the greenhouse and it is absolutely congested and looking very vigorous but this is not how a maple group should look there are lots of low branches here which need dealing with and generally it needs a lot of thinning out before i put it against a white background i will just show you the sort of work that i will do with first of all i will just bring a pair of scissors stay there just holding on the tree so all this foliage fortunately they’re all the same type of mountain maples so the spring color and the autumn color is perfect they don’t clash sometimes if you put different trees the autumn color can look odd you know some could be red some could be yellow some could be uh orange even so the first thing we need to do is bring it back into some sort of dome shape or conical shape you don’t even need to watch how carefully you need to do it you can just prune the ends if i can just show you i’m just going to prune a twig here it doesn’t matter now this twig here i would say is easily 30 centimeter long this is the old wood so from here to there that’s all new growth this year so there’s got about six nodes so how many leaves there must be about 20 leaves here all in the space of three weeks so if you didn’t prune this during the year it will get so unkempt that it will be a veritable jungle you will not be able to see anything so what i’m going to do is just with the scissors turn all the ends without even looking at the detail i’m going to make sure that each tree is going to have like a dome shape so that’s the first step in refining or maintaining this forest so all the ends about four to six inches long i’m just going to trim back just turn it on the turntable there is a front and the back of the tree when i put it against the white background i’ll explain to you look at the shoots here if you come along here look at this this is all this year’s growth 30 centimeters or more of this year’s growth i don’t want it so off it comes all that is going to be removed may seem drastic to you but that is what has to be done i’m not looking at the detail mind you i’m just trimming away as i said i could even do it blindfolded okay come closer here and you can just still see how much i’m just grabbing handfuls i guess you know if you went to a hairdresser they would do it in exactly the same way grab your hair and cut it although in my case i wish i had that much hair as recently as 10 years ago i was like a hippie so this is what i’m going to cut this is what we call the easy part when i get to the difficult part i will alert you you’re looking at the front of course these maples arranged in the group you cannot take it apart a lot of people say how do you repot this you know if you have to repot it you just tease around the edges if you want to take it apart and you destroy the group you’ll be starting from scratch all over again okay i’ve now pruned it roughly into shape look at the prunings on the ground this is what i’ve cut so far if i were to work fast and didn’t talk so much as i always say i could do this whole thing maybe in half an hour this is quite a tricky operation when we come to refining the detail as i say i haven’t got to that yet this is the rough cutting that i’m doing just a rough cutting and then if you remember a couple of years ago i did a video and i had a great big twin trunk and i was plucking the leaves and everyone started calling the chicken pluck a tree because what i’m doing is like plucking feathers again if you have a healthy nape that’s what you can do you might laugh but this is exactly how you would pluck a chicken or a pheasant so doing the chicken plucker treatment i’m just plucking off the leaves and why do i do it i do it for the simple reason that i need to thin it out to make it look more elegant and also i’m doing it because i want to let light into the structure the reason why this tree is looking so strong is because all the twigs are strong if i didn’t let light into the structure the twigs get weak and you will get a lot of die back so during the growing season i do expose the maples to full sun i don’t grow my maples in shade i may get some shade in the very hottest months like july august but partial shade but i never put it in dark shade or i give sun for part of the day so this is how i grow my maples largely in full sun so after doing the rough cut i’m now doing what we call the chicken plucker treatment just plucking the leaves like that it’s great fun i bet you would like to get your hands on it to do that but you’ve got to be a bit careful is i think it’s like plucking tea leaves no tea leaves are more delicate they pluck only the two leaves but here i’m just tearing off the foliage i’m leaving the petul if we come close i will show you what i mean about the petul if you look at look at this one for instance i pull the leaves off so i leave the petul these two little shoots there this is called the stalk or the petul so i left the petul and from there you’ll get the new leaves so i will go around the entire tree and pluck away and then when i feel it’s enough i will then go in home in and start creating the pads within the different layers of branches so already it’s looking a bit uh thinner it should do because i’ve taken quite a lot look at that amount i’ve taken out just in the space of a few minutes so the next thing to do is to put it against the white background and i’m going to show you how i’m going to find it so here we are i put it on a turntable against the white background so this should be the front of the tree if you come closer i’ll tell you why i needed to be in the front because this principle tree is visible whereas if i turned it round you can’t see the principal tree so this is clearly the back so we’re going to work from this as the front so we’re looking at this at the front at a quick glance it may look interesting but there is clearly a defect in that this tree right in the front i don’t want to get rid of it because it’s taken so many years to grow because i’ve had it since 1993 it must have been made in japan in the late 80s so this tree has been made at least 40 years ago 40 years so i would put this group at about 60 years 65 years since it was first made so this is quite an old group and it would be a shame to uh destroy some of the trees but this tree certainly is clouding it and because it’s clouding it i can do a couple of things i can just thin this or get rid of it but as i said i don’t want to get rid of it so i’m just going to thin this so that it can see the principal tree and each of the trees should have a nice domed effect so hopefully we can achieve that simply by proper pruning enough forest or group planting the trees should look very light and airy and you don’t want too many branches on the trunk we have some branches but not too many because if you have too many then it clouds the line of the tree now some of these branches are clearly a bit too long i give it usually a hard trim every second here i don’t do this hard pruning every year i just like to let it grow so you can see how i’m tackling each individual tree so although i look at each individual tree i’m also looking at the tree in relation to the entire group so you have to have what is called a strategic view you mustn’t lose sight of the wood for the trees as the saying goes so the reason why we don’t like to let too many branches grow along the trunk is that if you have too many branches growing you won’t be able to see the individual trunks now this is the top i like to give it a nice dome shape i noticed that in one of the comments on another youtube video someone said that oh why do you have this round tops now around the top signifies a mature crown you don’t want the thing going straight up poking like a feather you know a lot of these newly made trees have that effect that is not a good effect see these sort of tricks here growing from the trunk if it is not needed i get rid of it i want the trunk to be clear see like this one too if you look at this one i need to thin it okay i have a little bit but it shouldn’t become so dominant as to be a distraction [Music] sometimes you get a few dead twigs that’s not a problem we can clearly uh just cut it and get rid of it so this tree isn’t now these ones here i don’t want those ones so this is a very very mature group and because it’s been together as a group for the last 40 or so years you get this maturity the look of mature tree newly made groups don’t have this look and i’m trying to create pads which are flat again give a rounded shape to each tree and if there are too many tricks i will also thin some of them so so again i don’t want too many branches i just want sufficient branches to make it look delicate so this is done that’s done we’re going to move to the side this is got a major tree it’s got a nice dome shaped head but too dense to thin it a bit i’ve resisted selling this tree although people have asked asked about it because i think anyone who buys it will neglect it unless they bring it back for me to do each year i think if i gave one of you this straight with trim you would be intimidated you wouldn’t know where to start i don’t blame you but it can be taught what i’m doing really is teaching you how to do it so i’m telling each of these trees to give a rounded shape and so i can see the level the pads between each tier you see these different layers and too many shoots from the trunk i’m going to remove don’t want too many if you have too many then you lose the pads that will be clearly visible so you see that dome shape there just a bit of this distraction from the other tree bring the bag the usual bag trick so you can see this is what each tree should look like like that each tree should be a complete tree in its own light right with layers between the different uh branches this one is a bit too long so i’m cutting that off so although i’ve cut quite a lot it hasn’t really affected the look of the tree very much this is the small tree let me deal with it now when trees grow tight like this they always come outwards trying to catch the light so remember the expression and the expression about birds being able to fly through the structure applies more to forest groups like this than to anything else so having the light airy appearances so that little birds can fly through and you can see all the branches so you can already see it’s become much thinner and i keep showing you we will show you how much we’ve taken off i’m determined to complete this one i’ve got the jack here holding the camera so this is a chore as i said i do once i weigh second year which i would say it’s quite hard pruding for a group and of course the feeding regime is quite methodical i make sure that the trees are well fed by well-fed i mean they should not be weak so you can see this side i’ve thinned out quite a lot this tree the top has died if you come close you can see this has died but the tree is well alive but don’t be surprised if sometimes you get an entire tree dying when i started doing the video i did show that you do get some trees that die in a forest that’s inevitable i can assure you that it is inevitable because the nature of trees is such that you will always get some which are stronger than others and the stronger ones dominate the rest of the group and they take all the nourishment and the weaker ones will succumb whenever you make a group you have to expect that if you don’t expect that then you’re not being fair to the tree now this front tree i’m still going to thin it a little more because i want to still make it light enough so that you can see the back so the back will be visible and still be delicate enough now in here there’s a lot of congestion taking place lots of congestion there uh now this tree is leaning outwards but it is very very dense the branch is much too long sometimes i can’t really explain what i’m doing the aesthetics just comes i get the feel for what i’m doing so the secret of course is to have the entire group looking as a unity it mustn’t look disparate disparate meaning it shouldn’t be just formed of individual trees and each individual tree shouldn’t stand out so much that they don’t blend in with the group it’s like being i suppose in a sports team or army or whatever you must play together as a team so these trees are like members of a team a football team or baseball team they’ve all got to act in unison they mustn’t be so different so that it can fix with the others the common expression for this sort of triggering it is giving short backhand sides in england when you go to the barbers people say you want a short back inside that means you want the hair trimmed like this so this is what i’m doing giving the tree is a short back and sides now you must be asking me how often do i do this during the year it’s bound to be growing again because these trees don’t stand still during the year it will continue to grow and you have to keep dealing with it otherwise it will get completely unkempt so what we do is because we’ve done such a lot of hard prooring it’s not going to grow so much but there will still be growth and of course the subsequent tooling will be just like minor shoots not major shoots you see this is a long branch if you come close look at that over here this is one long branch from there to there reaching out so uh it’s filling this space so i’m not too worried so i’ll let it fill that space okay now this one it’s got a nice crown here i’ll just show you against the white i think this black trick is so useful look at it so this is what we are trying to create each tree should have this domed shape so we’re almost done look at the large chunks coming out so there are several phases the first phase was pulling out those long 20 to 30 centimeter or 8 to 12 inch long shoots that have been produced in the last three weeks and then i do the chicken plucker treatment just pulling off the leaves to let light in that’s getting a bit too high for me i may need to stand on a chair so i’m trying to remember to show the trunks as much as possible thank you [Music] oh i remember when i went to do the chelsea flower show i used to have to trim the trees so that the timing is just right that means i leave it till it produces enough new shoots because the chelsea flower show used to be in the third week in may so if i were to do the chelsea flower show which would take place in may uh we would do it at this time of the year which is the third week in april and it gives it one full month to develop new leaves to make it look presentable so hopefully this has thinned it quite a bit you can now see through the tree you can see the individual branches i know that’s more refinement to do and if you just prime the camera around and you can see how much i’ve taken off all that all that and on the floor as well so i would say i have taken off possibly 50 of the foliage if i have the time or inclination i can count each individual leaf there is a finite number of leaves i’d love to know how many leaves there must be a couple of thousand leaves that have taken off so there you go with this group and i like to show this in the autumn when it has good autumn color and that is how i would do with this group as i said i’m reluctant to remove this tree because it is still part of the group but you can still see into it and i think this is a lovely group okay i hope you’ve enjoyed this one so i’ve finished trimming this tree it only took me about half an hour to do the entire forest group so you see the results let me show you the front this is the front if you look from here this is the front with the principal tree there i’ve thinned this tree quite considerably let me show you the back so that you can compare the front and the back so this is what the back looks like and this is the front again now because this tree has been growing the leaves for the last three four weeks the leaves are fairly firm so it’s quite safe to feed it now because the group has been together for at least 40 or more years planted as a group it’s very hard to get any fertilizer in there so i use what i would like to think is my particular trick if i drill holes i drill holes into the soil and it doesn’t matter if i disturb the root because i’m just letting air go through this is so stiff that even the drill is getting stuck so all i do is go right through the pot all over right in the middle as well i can see that quite a few trees have died i reckon about seven or eight of the original trees have died and as i say it’s mainly because the stronger trees have taken over and not allowed the weaker trees to develop so after drilling the holes what i do now is i sprinkle the fertilizer i use a mixture of organic fertilizer the japanese sell a lot of fertilizer but this is my own mix i use organic and a special tree fertilizer i won’t mention the names because i’m not ready to here to sell the product so it’s a mixture of organic and chemical fertilizer and the chemical fertilizer is usually a high nitrogen not too high because this is a mature group that’s all i do i sprinkle it over the top and every time i water this fertilizer is going to trickle in so it’s now almost the third or fourth week in april the next time i feed will probably be july and that’s all i need to do two feeds in the year so again this is the back it’s the front i won’t thin it much more because i want to leave some leaves to strengthen the tree again when it has its second spurt of growth i would say towards the end of june or early july i may give it a further trim so this is all i need to do it’s a shame that this tree is in the way because it worries me but i still keep it because it’s like what we call the dance of the seven veils if you show everything bare it’s not so uh fascinating you know when you have a veil like these uh dancers with a veil half hidden you don’t know what is behind there it adds to the mystery of the group and this is why this group works with this tree in the front so this was just the little addendum to the work i did showing how i feed the tree [Music] so
