We have a lot of Scots pines on the nursery and in this video I take you through the thinking process I go through to refine this Scots pine.
I have a lot of interesting scots pines that i’ve been wanting to work on for quite a while these i acquired uh from a collector who didn’t want any more of them and they were only partly trained but i’ve been gradually trying to refine them over the past couple of years so this is one of those very interesting ones because it’s been bent to form this funny curly shape and it’s got so much potential that i wanted to take you through my thought process as to how i would improve that if you look at this tree closely in fact i will now just switch the camera bear with me so let me explain to you the features of this tree so this tree has this beautiful twist at the top almost like a question mark look at it it’s absolutely like a question mark and the question mark means doubt question what can we do with it so this is the big question so probably i’ll call this tree the question and i prefer this as the front although a number of people have seen it they think that it would be better the other way so let me show you the tree the other way i’m working by the way inside the office because it is quite late in the night and rather than go out into the cold of the nursery i’ll work inside so this side is a different perspective altogether these are genuinely old trees with scotch pines you can’t fake the age this feature on the bark where you get this gnarled old bark this only comes with age young pines you don’t get this so this is a really really old tree and to do it justice we must bring out the beauty of this tree so the beauty of this tree is really in the trunk as with all literature trees this is a classic literary the trunk line like the brush stroke paintings that the chinese literary scholars created were the be-all and end-all of the composition so for my money this seems to be one of my favorite expressions now for my money i need to emphasize this trunk line it shouldn’t be cluttered and hidden if we were to turn the tree around the other way and try to use this is the front how could you get away with it i know you got to thin the foliage but uh it would still not look right so rather than waste too much time deciding i have more or less decided that the beautiful face of the tree is this side and i will keep most of the foliage at the back so that the foliage at the back will act as a foil for the front of the tree so straight away i think that some of this which is hiding can possibly be taken to the back or even taken out altogether and then we will reveal more of the beautiful trunk line and the little beautiful features of the branches themselves so let me start work on it with all scotch spines and in fact most pines if you don’t control the growth they keep getting longer and longer so this long growth here which is about over two and a half inches long this has all grown in the last year i’ll bring the camera closer to show you in detail what i’m working on this long bit here so this bit here is all last year’s growth and what i’m going to do is i’m just going to shorten it by taking out the tip i know but that by doing that i can control the growth and not only that i can create but back the branch won’t die because i’m leaving a bit of green now this is very cluttered there i think if i took that away i can show that beautiful curve much better so this is quite a big decision i’m going to take and i’m probably going to not probably i will remove this punch so when i remove the branch you will see the difference this is the branch i’m going to get rid of taking all that out i can show that beautiful line i can keep that in case i want to wire it that way i don’t want to leave too many gins because i don’t really like gins for the sake of gins so i’m just still going to just shorten the tips of the shoots so it looks more refined [Applause] there’s still far too much so less is more less is more if ever you are doubtful about taking a branch off bear in mind that principle it will give you courage to take it off okay let’s have a look at it again so i removed those few branches there and the ends i’ve also trimmed i just keep everything there in case you think that i’ve been bluffing you that’s what i’ve removed mainly from the bottom there i’m going to wire those and i’ve now been able to show the lovely s shape more clearly so it’s like looking through a moon gate as it were let me ask myself do i need this one probably not that line is very beautiful going down that way and we can wire these and this can be all white flat [Applause] and just by doing that i’ve created a much more beautiful line so the back is going to be thinned a little more and then i will proceed with wiring so i’m going to start thinning the back a little more because it’s very very congested so all i’m doing first is to shorten the needles because they were not treated last year they need to be shortened so they can be much tighter in growth there’s a lot of lovely density there anything we need to just pluck some of the noodles as they say like a chicken plucker they say that by plucking the needles you can encourage a bit of bud back of course if you pluck too much you can weaken the tree so you’ve got to be careful it’s a careful balance as to how much you pluck if you pluck all the needles of course that trigger branch will die so i’m trying to keep just the needles at the tips of the twigs and of course once they’re wide they will begin to look neater picture i don’t have a cameraman here but you’ve got to make two and then i’m going to wire it so that it comes this way so i’m now going to do some wiring and this is the part unfortunately because i don’t have my cameraman here it won’t be able to focus close but you just got to trust me that i’m doing it i will show you the finished result wiring is one of those activities in bonus eye which are very necessary or essential but it is a very tedious process it’s like studying i remember when i was a student i knew that studying was important but i hated it so same with worrying so water can be compared to you know a rigorous regime almost like any form of practice the more you do it the better you get so as we say there are no shortcuts i’m forever looking for two branches to work so that’s what goes through my mind when i do wiring always looking for pairs pairs that are of the same thickness as far as possible and matching it with the right grid of wire i’ve been conducting a lot of these free consultations on whatsapp and people from all over the world from united states canada italy belgium holland portugal you name it they ring up from all over the world and i’m delighted to speak to them and they show me their work but i think what i find most common is that people are not very good at wiring and a lot of their problem stems from not using the right grid of wire i’ve always said that you can’t be too stingy a lot of people are very stingy if you know what the expression stingy is stingy means misery i know that not everyone has a lot of money but wire is so essential that you cannot skimp on wire always have enough wire not just enough wire but enough y of the right grades very often you find that you may not have the right grade then you will make do with something inappropriate either too thin and it won’t do the job or it’s too thick it will damage the branch so always have enough wire around it is absolutely essential if you are to progress in the hobby the best advice i give you is to make sure you invest in wire i’ve often told you that back in the 1980s as recently as the 1980s when we were starting out in bonsai in the uk anzarwa was almost unknown it was not available it was only until the mid 80s it became available so what did we do we simply improvised we used to take the insides of electric cables and use that for wiring so we made do with all sorts of things it wasn’t easy but that was the best we could do and now with why so readily available you don’t have any excuse not to be able to create decent borderline because you have the wires but for goodness sake don’t skimp on wire so this is the lower pad that i’ve wired you can see the wiring given time by the middle of the summer all the needles will start looking upwards at the moment they’re going horizontal they will look upwards you know like little cusps so that comes when they start facing the light so that is that branch done so let’s have a look and see what we’re trying to achieve let me walk right round the tree you’ve got to keep looking in different angles to get a better impression of what you’re trying to create because you’ll suddenly see something which you may not have seen before so there’s still a lot of work to do and i will just carry on wiring so that all the pads are going to be flat and it will look tidier for doing that so at the moment i’m trying to look at the tree through the hoop and seeing the beauty there but i’ve just noticed another possible front of the tree if i keep the tree at a slight angle like this so that the question mark is not full frontal but at a slight slant that is also very pretty so there are many different possibilities of showing the front of that tree so i will persevere and see what happens as i keep doing more wiring so i’ve got to now refine some of that wiring there some of those branches will be wired and laid into more uh ordered fashion there are a few stubs here which you notice i’m going to gin them properly they were just cut off and because i don’t have the cameraman with you all i can show you is that i’m going to split it with the bronze splitter to give it a much finer point so these will all be split can you see that one that that stub will be split so that it becomes finer you see that that is the effect i’m trying to create and same with this one here this is all dead wood here this is all dead wood so all this is going to be ginned i’m just going to show you a bit of what i’m doing you see i’ve split that bark there split the wood and i’m just tearing it back there like that so that i’m going to expose more wood sorry i’m trying to work with one hand and film with the other hand so that is what i’m trying to do if you can see can you see the effect what i want to show you here is a special bonsai tool you must be wondering what the special tool is no it’s not a special bonsai tool this is just a potato peeler and i find it very useful to shave the bark of the trees so again as i say you don’t have to buy expensive bonsai tools so when it comes to certain jobs like this you see how useful this potato peeler is so that would have saved you a bob or two so that’s a useful thing to do you’ve got to be careful with pine bark not to take the flaky bark off because the beauty of the pine is in the bark uh so and i also use ordinary kitchen knives to do the job let me adjust the camera and you can see there are these bits which are dead wood and i’m going to take the bulk of this and ordering kitchen knives also are very useful so all this because this is a dead branch it’s not a live branch it’s very hard to get the bark off so i may need to use the dremel i know that many people don’t like to hear the sound of the dremel because it reminds them of the dentist drill but this is the object that i’m trying to achieve i’m trying to remove the bark from dead wood to give it that white look and also where the stubs have just been cut cut straight i’m going to use the branch cutter to make the ends more natural looking like so so i’m peeling the bark or peeling the wood back like that very tedious purpose it’s not everyone’s idea of fun certainly not mine but a lot of people will enjoy that so scrape away and expose the wood and this will be ginned it’s very hard to work so that i’m performing from the camera very awkward because i’m trying to show you what i do normally i would be right in front of the piece of work that i’m working on which means i block the camera but such is life so you can see what i’m trying to do i’m removing the dead bark which is much more difficult than removing live park this could take lots of time so you get the idea i’m just trying to bring the camera close again so you can see i’ve introduced that curve by taking away that dead wood there was a lump of wood here that made it look ugly so by taking that away i’ve introduced a curve slight curve to the trunk can you see so i’ve created a concave effect just by removing some dead wood so the more i look at the tree the more i like it so it is minimalist not to the extreme but certainly very very sparse and the beauty of the tree is in the curve kirby branches i don’t know whether these film shots give you a good appreciation what i’m trying to achieve see there’s more dead wood underneath here if i take away that i’ll get more curve as well so after just a little bit of wiring that’s all i did remove the tree didn’t have much to begin with so that is the foliage i’ve removed mainly the tips of the shoots one or two branches and i’m reduced to here now and you can now see the beautiful line of that question mark and there are a few odd bits of gin that i’ve got to refine more adequate amounts of ginger so this is looking at the tree in its entirety as with all trees looking at it in real life it’s quite different from seeing it through a camera lens the camera lens doesn’t really do it justice but this is the effect that i’ve managed to create you can see we’re looking through the curve so this is our question mark tree i know that someone’s interested in it it might even sell tomorrow because i’m showing a customer several pines and i think here four for this so there you go [Music] you
