for i think about fifteen years or more than twenty years they do this too much for tips so there's more before having your lunch but it would be smart to drop them a few bucks just to make sure that they can eat tonight themselves we have a small situation when real so we have a little cut off at noon now i don't know if you notice the mold of your no david sometimes he gets i'd like to give her a standing ov it is an honor to be invited to the first one and also today thirty three years later sandy says certainly age since then i was slim i had more hair so yeah you have to take me in my grizzled old state rather than the young fresh adolescent state yes ok i hear this morning we're going to be doing a critique of the trees that were brought today in montreal we prefer not to use the word critique because it's people get worried about that he's going to you know criticize my tree so we use the word analysis which i think is gentler and more diplomatic we analyzed the trees and i do do that every year and i think you know this morning i was i brought some books from the fourth national show in the state that was last year and i think it's especially informative you really learn bone saw by looking at trees by attending critiques looking at trees in an album from the advantage to having you know the album from the fourth national show is that you see north american trees that you know were collected often here in the states and transformed into bone sigh a lot of them were collected some were grown so that's really really a good way of learning about trees this morning i was remarking on the health and the beauty of a lot of these you know native trees like this larch is are such a pleasure to work on because they're native to this area so they can be left outside in winter and they're so well adapted to our climate so there's a large there's  maple such i don't see many of here but other native trees that are very very it's advantageous to work on countries that surround us you can go and work on i did see some  species they were introduced from europe but they grow everywhere and you can dig them out the you'd probably you know be rewarded almost for digging them out and using them as bone side they're good bones i subjects i see vanessa brought a i you attack this which is they're not native but they certainly grow well as hedges and foundation plantings so you can find very nice specimens to transform his bones so i also and they're well adapted to this area there's hemlocks there's apple trees there's many other species that you should be using living here in vermont and we have the same climate obviously in montreal so  we should all be using those species of trees so i don't know i'll they they brought out a tree it's kristen's large larch now i've gone to the point where i know everyone by their first names so kristen's in the back there and and i was talking about similarities in and climates well kristen is actually the tree was collected from come back from the north shore the north shore is that far far it's about twenty hours from montreal it's the tundra it's bogs and the trees are very very old and have a very unusual shape that's given to the trees naturally by die back from the mostly from the wind they grow the cord or the st lawrence river corridor or on rock so during the winter if they're not covered with snow they drive back from drying winds very strong winds the next year they'll send out a new little growth tip and they keep getting repeated and repeated until you get these very unusual shapes we call them checks there's a check here and a check there where the tree changed got a new leader and grew up and it gives them you know a regular a large that grows in the south here grow straight as a die especially if you find them in a bog you know you the roots go really quite far down and they're totally uninteresting unless you get it young enough and you can train it by wiring it the the advantage of collected trees is obviously they're already older so they have a character that's been given by either animals chewing on them or it could be you know the cold winds could be living on a mountaintop where there is very little very poor nutrients so the trees grow very slowly and become very contorted you know dwarfed by the  elements and those are the trees that are becoming more and more interesting for a north american bone psych rowers for a long time when i was young everybody wanted all the different japanese species they wanted a little japanese white  demonstrator and workshop leader at the a b s convention in baltimore last week at it was called the turf in ellicott city it's halfway between baltimore and washington and the the convention organizers had put the emphasis on collective trees so i brought a beautiful old boy is from quebec the guy guidry brought you know his bald cypress and there was wonderful old colorado spruce that ryan neil was using but almost all the trees were collected material and and the last day it was a sunday morning there was a panel discussion on the ethics and the ways of collecting trees so there was guy de dri there was larry jackal there was andy smith who was in south dakota myself who also there was a fellow from maryland a block black fellow that talked about urban collecting urban yamma dory collecting that you know there's a neighborhood that's being yuppified the developers the promoters are buying three hundred all the homes are on a third of an acre lot so they're buying up these homes that date back to the sixty's they're raising them and they're building make mansions and so i mean her whole neighborhood is dotted by signs saying you know soon to be built by this developer so she calls up the developers and she said look if you're going to be demolishing this house can i go on the property and dig out things and she has wonderful trees because she's digging out she has a you want to miss you know with a trunk like that and the movement is incredible that she dug out of someone's backyard she has great some great trees so you can do urban collecting too of it's too physically exhausting to get into the mountains but she can ok so that said gorgeous tree the reason why we like the mist because they have so much character they have deadwood which we call gin they have movement they have you know branches that are not always in the right place you can see where kristen has been very creative she didn't have a branch on this side so she took a back branch and brought it over and brought it down here and this branch is quite lovely because it's filling in the gap here the empty side this one here is nice the only thing is kristen is this the front or is this the front little more to see the inside you see this is blocking this inside curve here and that's what was giving me problems also the two front branches should be coming more towards you so this one is coming here this one is going back there so either the back part you're going to have to shorten and let this grow out more or you're going to have to wire this part more forward here so you do want to see into the tree ok you really do want to see and this one's ok on the side here this one let it grow out a little bit more lower and also this one a slight bit lower ok and if it is this is the front of the tree is leaning in the right direction if the other side was the front here the tree is leaning back like this and it's that's an uncomfortable feeling the part is you had it made by john i think it's quite appropriate i really do i want to congratulate you on the choice of pot it's it's dark it's rustic looking it's doesn't take away from the tree and it's certainly not too too small it's just about the right size so i do like your choice of thought i'm pleased that you did get a part that size you're going to watch about if this is the front here this is a little bit i poking you might want to shorten and a little bit more there but it's a it's it's a lovely it's coming along very well now the new tips are all moving upwards so there it is going to have to be wired down and the top is a little bit weak so don't pinch it let it foliage is that we find enough ok i did say when we worked on these large we've been doing sort of a study group thing with them we've worked on them two or three times and i did say that it does take a few years to refine the foliage here for example you see there's this wonderful low floating plateau but this has to be brought down to the side these down to the side so make all these mini plateaus all along the branch  and they this has to be brought up a little bit this down a little bit more so you have all these little floating clouds all along the branch ok and you do wire very well so i know you can do it well and and this one as i said as the front branch it's hiding so take it off completely this one here i don't know where you would put it quite frankly you don't want to put it on top of the s you don't want to hide them uniform movement inside of here so there's no place when there's no place to put it you cut it off it's as simple as that you know but a lot of character don't let the blueberries get too high it does give a bit of character but just just a little touch not now the parts being overrun so get your scissors in there and raise some of it off you know a little bit in the background of the the roots are quite they're all new roots and the quite nice but here they're a little bit weak so you can especially you know where there's not good roots that's where you want to leave a little something to hide that fact so about here would be the best place and leave the front you know remove some of it and just moffitt up a bit more which is good eventually you can get this big there's just one living root here but you've got so many good strong new vigorous roots coming out that i don't think you need and you're going to say it's collect that you know god or whoever it is created it mother nature you don't expect perfection you're like going for a character you know and i don't care so much about the roots or the placement in the branch i'm interested in the part i'm interested in in the rest of the tree so very very good i am i'm pleased with the way your tree is progressing ok let's go to a next tree ok this is a banyan tree fika some micro carpet and they're very nice trees as bone psi and they don't use them as much in florida though because they say they're too ordinary there's too easy to find and they grow too fast so they're using stranger cult of our sometimes i'll raise it up a little bit but they do make very good bonsai some of them they call they say they have tiger bark they're all spotted and i think maybe this might be one of those tiger bark ones now it was a clever whose tree is ok over here ok well it was clever to the roots are very one sided they were much stronger on this side so there was a rock put under and under the root and this root will flatten out on it but it does give it a look of being fuller so that was a good if you put the rock under it was under the roof that was a good idea ok now the only thing is fica sar like spruce or something the branches are often the bell swing upwards ok because they're rubber trees so they're very elastic rubbery so you do want to bring branches downwards you see this one especially how it's coming up the tips of them all have to be brought down like this this is getting straight in here so you know you can bring this down a bit more here and  bring all of these branches down so actually the tree is very good quality but everything's growing up like that so you want especially to have everything growing down like that slightly below the horizontal these all it's a nice branch but it's getting a little denuded here but if you bring it down and then bring some of this in the front that'll help fill out the tree also by bringing them out and wiring them outwards like  thinker's opening on the palm of your hand it lets in more light so you'll get more back biting you'll get little sprouts coming out along here which would be advantageous i see you have put quite a bit of fertiliser on which is a good thing to ok it's organic fertiliser yeah ok well when leaves turn yellow that's an indication of one of two thinks mainly it's a lack of needed nitrogen two to photosynthesize to the field it's mostly nitrogen so if they don't have nitrogen they can't do their work they can't transform the energy of the sun into food for the plants so it's very very important to give them fertilizers especially with nitrogen and this you know fight this are not grown for flowers or fruits they do form little flowers and very small you know y tiny though very tiny tiny but they're mainly grown for the beauty of the trunk and the and the leaves so you don't need to worry too much about giving them more phosphorus just nitrogen is good so that the tree is coming along well there's nothing much i would cut off there's a branch that started to get long i might cut off this one right right at this level because it's sort of getting to be parallel with this one and then bring this part down a little bit more but especially the top branches and this long straight one bring them down sometimes we wire them and if they if they resist we is you put a bit of rubber there and pull the branch down and then tach it there it's a gentler way of persuading the branches to grow in the direction you want sometimes it's a book with wires on that wire is not strong enough to pull them down then will guy wire them also so often focus our guy wired because you have to leave because they're lastic and they come back up you have to hold them down a very long time before they remember to keep that shape but here it's a very good ok good you're welcome if any of you if it's your tree and you have a specific question something bothering you about the tree you know or something some grown brazil the discovered by a little who was a french explore and brought back to to europe but now you find the boy you find them growing in the is or is and mexico all those tropical caribbean islands around the bilious in florida they have great there's a fellow named a young fellow named eric weigert he's down in fort myers and he just goes around again people that are selling their houses or houses being demolished aerial stop and buy them sometimes they're growing on telephone poles and some of them have trunks this big he has some monstrous movement really is and it really really impressive and they grow so well even in the northern climates if you keep them cool enough in winter they do like cooler weather in winter if you can keep them in the fifty's in your house in a cool room they'll grow very well even if they lack water sometimes they'll drop all their leaves have to go through stress in order to flower in the tropics it's often brazil sometimes they get cold snaps coming from the the antarctic and you know when the coffee bean fails and not because of the cold bougainvillea suffer a bit too but they'll come back they can take some cold and but they lose all their leaves or they freeze and then when they start growing again they start flowering or if you forget to water them and all the leaves dry up then about a month later they start flowering so if you want to get them to flower a second time in the year you cut off all the leaves or you do a very severe pruning and then about a month to month and a half later they'll flower again you can twice a year is good if you try to get them to flower more often than that you exhaust the plant ok now these are what you see here is not actually the flowers the colored part are brock's li is you know all the bright red point said he is so now they come in all whites and spotted but these are just the the pedals the colored petals protecting the flowers the flowers are just these three tiny tiny little things in the middle bougainvilleas are fun to work with the leaves are a little bit big but that's why most of the bougainville years are larger trees but this is quite sweet because it is a small tree you there are dwarf friday's there's and you can get any color now you can get whites yellows purples dark dark pinks almost red light pink the most common one is this color here it's called royal purple and it's the most vigorous of them all and very easy to cuttings and get to the trunks and that and they're very easy to grow as bone sigh because if you want when you just cut off a branch in florida they'll cut off the branches and just stick them in the ground and they start to grow they'll send out roots you don't need to worry about them the only thing is they tell me that when you cut off big trunks or branches and stick them in the ground they'll never have a good root system so you're better off taking a small cutting and growing it in a pot because they get really good root systems and this one has a nice root system so i imagine it was started from a smaller cutting and grown on from that there's a bit too many little scrappy branches at the base of the branches you should remove you have to watch out when you're wiring them because the brass the wood is very brittle it's yellow inside and if you break it it never repairs itself ok but you can do severe cuts this one was carved out where it was cut in florida termites get in there and they destroy the trees so a lot of the old specimens are all hollowed out and they'll send out new growth from everywhere when they prune them they prune them in florida with chainsa out eric has to a whole panoply of tools for smoothing over the cuts because he says they don't heal very well they don't you know heal over very well so that's another good thing but venessa get off the the limb the scrappy little things you're starting to get too many little branches and they're shading each other out so i would thin them out you've got a lot of places maybe you're worried about them not growing well so you less left two or three rather than one so you do have to make a choice like here there's a nice one but here there's another one so you've got three in a row they're all parallel you have to choose which one  also you know this is a nice shape here is starting you have to let them grow out if you want flowers because the flowers are all produced at the ends of the growing and the branches at the growing tips so you can't prove them all the time but right after they flower you prune them back real hard real real hard and really you give the tree a shape again and you wire it and keep on repeat repeating and repeating and repeating all of this stuff down here just weakens the trees so it should be removed all of this this is small stuff here this small stuff here so just take that off the only time if you want a scar to heal over a bit you can leave a branch grow up in order to strengthen it  the heel over but aside from that don't leave any of these little sucker growth on the tree this side is the longest side but this is starting to get too long so this is going to need to be pruned back in this way here like this so you always have to have asymmetrical triangle this is the side you want to be longer and this one shorter but it's got a good taper excellent taper because of the way it was cut back it's got good roots generally  you see you don't have that many flowers the pot is very shallow for trees that are heavy flowers or fruiterer's need more energy so generally you put them in a slightly deeper pot ok so they'll have that extra energy and you can throw in a little bit of black soil or at least more in so they'll get the more energy or bone meal in the edges of the pot so they'll flower better and bougainvilleas often people have trouble getting off and have trouble getting them to flower for them and because they're heavy feeders of manganese not magnesium and guineas and that's m and and so you have to sometimes do a top dressing are do a supplemental feeding with manganese to get them to flower well aside from that they're fun to work with they don't take heavy they don't take real cold green houses i always had to send them to another grower because my greenhouses were too cold and a frost will kill them right back to the trunk but if it's not if they don't freeze for too many hours then they'll grow back ok so any questions about the tree or is the most vigorous of them all is very very good if it's flowering all the time maybe you're giving it you know i was just for the last tree i was saying give it more nitrogen it doesn't flower fruit bougainvilleas you don't want to give them too much nitrogen ok because then you're encouraging it's like tomato plants if you give them too too much nitrogen they get long and lanky a lot of green leaves but no tomatoes well the same thing with the moon and they'll grow very very vigorously but it's not one thousand you want to give them it's a fertilizer that's very low in one thousand gion with especially more phosphorus ok the middle number so you don't want to encourage a lot of green growth you want to encourage flowering so that might be the problem if it's too vigorous and it's probably too much fertilizer too much nitrogen ok it usually after you take them one out of the winter storage conditions like if you're keeping it in a cool room and it you know they don't they sort of don't look very happy during the winter you know they look sort of lanky and the leaves are very nice so you cut them all off and you prune them heavily and then they start growing and as they say after a month a month and a half then they flower everywhere and then so if you wanted to plo again well now you know you have to let it grow out a little bit to get energy it's still not these haven't become strong enough i would why are them all down but probably maybe in another month then i would shorten them all and do a heavy pruning again and then it would flower probably in august or september again yeah you know i had my time and you know i grew a nice one a royal purple little cutting and into a huge cascade and actually i sold it to a student and he sold it back and he sold it to the botanical gardens and so but it's spectacular it was in flower for shows once or twice in september and it was just like all flowers like thousands of them and you know i mean all of visitors would walk they'd put it near the entrance way you know to the show and all of visitors would just stop and go oh my gawd you know i mean it was just like incredible so if there are spectacular when they're in flower ok and this is a maple that was originally purchased from me and i heard a story about the top having died back that will kill it so you just have to remove the diseased parts which i heard you did so it's recovered pretty well the bari is very good on this tree now if you do have dead ends cardamom because if they did die because of a disease you don't want the disease spreading into the other parts of the tree so you take your concave pruners and you cut back a bit and you see if it's all healthy you know if it's green where you cut if there's any like block parts that means the disease gone further so you cut back a bit more and a bit more until finally you know you remove it all sometimes you don't come back all the way because you're hoping that new growth will come out of there but i have seen a lot of little dead ends there's a little dead in here that you have to cut off and some up here so any time you get any parts that have died back cut them off ok it's just like if you have a gang green if they don't cut off your arm or leg it's going to spread into your body and you're going to you're to die ok so you have to watch out japanese maples are a little bit susceptible to fungal diseases in in the northwest the pacific northwest they have the ideal climate for growing japanese maple but because it's so weather like this today they do have a lot of fungal diseases they spray it with and fungicide bacteria side called white on p h y t o n fight on twenty seven and they do several treatments during the spring and fall with that and they have great success keeping them healthy and so fight on might be a good recommendation if you can get it here also and you do have some fight on ok also then the new growth has to be paler but it's too pale when you can see the veins the arteries in the leaf and there are darker green that means one o two things usually may be lacking a bit of fertilizer but mostly lacking iron ok so there is a product you can get at any local garden supply center it's called iron knight as an iron iron knight you can buy it in small packages i was in essex junction and there's a depot a home place and you can buy small packages of iron knight and also there's fertilizer in with it and a couple of times a year treat it with that follow the directions on the bag and it'll green up so nicely the tree because right now it's lacking iron maybe it's because your water has more calcium in it it might be city water city water the add calcium to it so the pipes won't rust or it could be just you know a lack of iron in the soil so yeah you're going to have to supplement it and get it healthier a little bit healthier to cut back all the dead parts as for branching the branching is pretty good you know it's quite ram the the only thing is sometimes it's all on one level like here it's very flat so it would be very interesting occasionally to get you know bring down some branches and get several levels they're ok don't let them get too long and thick the branches you want all fine delicate ramification this is gotten too thick ok so you try to encourage the finer branching in there and try to have different level so the light will get through because if it gets too thick the upper branches will shade out and also it's not pretty to have thick branches so you really do want to get in there and cut back some of  these if the if they do get taken there this is not too bad there's nothing really really thick or shading out the others this one's a bit longer than this one which is a good thing this one here is is pretty good m here that's not so pretty now there is a thick branch here but you're going to need some of it but there's a big thick part that's growing out here that has to be cut back ok they're now the top this this one sticking out like a sore thumb and this is your top but it's taking away from the top so this one can i cut that one after ok that has to come off there this one here talks always become much stronger than the top part of a tree than the bottom part of a tree so you really have to go in there and prune it more often and prune it back more strongly also  o that more light will get through to the bottom branches and you can actually force the the bottom branches to grow stronger and you have to prove probably twice as often the upper part of a tree as the lower part of a tree so that's important to keep in mind because if this gets too big of the top what's going to happen all the branches below it will weaken lack of light and the energy that's flowing up there is very strong it's taking away energy from lower branches so you have to keep that in mind so with this one as i say more iron a little bit more fertilizers so that iron knight will come in handy it's only about six or seven dollars  and they should be growin in a sort of not bright bright sunlight an area that gets morning sun or shaded under large trees or that but they don't like full sunlight the japanese but the japanese not so keep all of that in mind yeah that's pretty you know well that's not bad it's better than south or west you know selden or western facing exposures so i think that's pretty good your tree is actually you know quite it's doing well it's thriving but we can always get them even healthier and that's what you're going to have to do with this tree ok from that being the two trunk so i mean i understand that one can make that design but your point took that lower left branch away then i think design wise it's just a very interesting double track you know which makes well you know about maybe six nine or ten years ago we had a lady give a talk on the architecture of trees she just put out a new book two weeks ago but she studies trees the way they grow and designs them starting from a seedling and in order to understand what makes a maple grow like a maple or an oak grow like an oak or a pine grow like a pin from japan with all the branches flowing down mutable triangle and she said but that's not a natural me style a national make all style is branches coming out and sometimes they're multi trunked multi  maple has to have that beautiful like almost time shape coming out sometimes almost like looking like a broom style and in this case maybe yes it takes away from the two trunk style but it adds to the overall sort of room style look of the tree and secondly if you do take it off then you've got another problem you're left with this long straight line here ok now a tree that's more broom style is again if you took this off here you're going to have too much space from here to here you can bring it around a little bit like that so it becomes less obvious but the trouble isn't bone si is if you take something off is it going to improve the tree as a going to make it better or will it take something away from the trees and in this case even this bar branch will leave too much of a gap from there to there so it is filling it a bit but if it's obvious you try to hide it you put it a little bit in front so you don't see it's a bar branch the ones that bother me the most are these two that are the same thickness and i just cut back some of it but i don't want to cut it all back right now so you can go eat some more softer this this branch here is still a bit long let me just cut it back a little it's going a bit ok there we go it's going back  towards but trying to keep maple looking like a meatball you know the too many people try to take the trees and and push them into classical style bone sigh but it's it's not the natural style of that species of tree and so i maybe as you get older too you get more relaxed not lazy relaxed is that you you know in bone side they say you know young apprentice has to learn all the styles from eight is there and master them and then when the apprentice becomes a master he has to forget all the rules and create my own side so maybe i've gotten the point i'm not saying i'm a master but i've gotten to a point in my life where i don't want to be guided by criteria and rules anymore guidelines i just want to have beautiful bone side that look like natural trees ok was probably maybe about twenty years old so and this boy how long have you had it three or four years now and so probably it's been probably about fifteen years that i since it was there layered probably maybe the part is starting to get a little small for it you know and because it's gotten more rounded with age and overall simpler overall would be nice in my opinion think yeah yeah the lower you can get it's sort of like how can i put it a little bit ironic paradoxical that you know maples look very good in shallow pots but they don't like to have this soil heat up they don't like to have hot roots they grow in shade and shade in woods me pools so in one sense it's not a good thing to put them in shallow pots but if you put them in quite a deep part they look so ugly so they do put them in shallow pots but that's why they choose bright glazes for them pale what you know ivory collared and pale blues because the glaze you know resists the sun and so it keeps the soil cooler and you keep a nice covering of mosse on the top which cools the soil too so there's an advantage to using bright bright pale shades soil starts becoming too alkaline the iron is locked in that the roots cannot absorb it ok and so what happens was is that maple as i said the ph is probably starting to become a little bit more alkaline because of the water or fertilizer or something and so you want to give the tree supplemental iron feeding but a lot of trees do not like maples the japanese maple grows  the slightly acidic soil between the ph should be about six to six point five so that's neutralised seven so slightly acidic the minute it starts getting higher than that then they start having problems getting c and stuff like that but there are other trees that like an alkaline soil juniper's for example juniper is the soil the ph of the soil should be seven seven point five and so they don't need a lot of iron what they want is calcium and magnesium so that you have to add all of me to klein ok for the them so they it all depends on the species of tree ok some like limey soils and others like acidic soils you have to sort of do a sort of a little how can one put it a little research into where trees grow as i was saying i'm a people grows even in japan in a forest like in behind us and what kind of soil is that in that poorest it's slightly acid it's between six and seven because most of its leaf litter leaves that have fallen from other trees and built up over the years ok and so they like and the the soil because it's shaded is damp it's cool very spongy and that's the type of soil that means pools like so you don't put them in a real gritty soil and this and that and it's slightly acidic between six and seven so you try to represent the natural environment that particular tree juniper is example grow on sort of cliffs and rocks and and and almost inevitably always online stone which is very alkaline so you have to sort of do a little research read about the trees you're growing so you'll know what their natural conditions are ok well this one's a lovely little japanese black pine very very short needles which is a good thing i would say it probably did come from japan originally because the styling is very interesting the japanese get them as young trees and twist the hell out of them to make them look like wild trees they start them from little seedlings and then they twist them over to to look while and this one here was came up and they twisted it down and underneath to make it look like a tree growing in the mountains on a cliff this is not the front this is looks like the bud and a little bit and the tree is moving away from you so this is the front over here which is quite nice except some of this is is hiding the front so i would push it over this way and push this over a little bit more the needles are very small so it's it's it's been clipped the candles have been clipped to keep it short which is a good thing too they do need heavy fertilization so those fertiliser balls i would put maybe for half vaults all around it half bowls the pot is well chosen it's a token army where container very very simple but very beautiful and it could be older it could be maybe a forty or fifty year old pot so it matches the tree very well it's the showing size show here in is it has to be oh probably the maximum is about nine or ten inches so i didn't bring a tape i have in the car so you have to keep it very short like this but it looks very nice on those stands the show he stands at three like this in an exhibition is hard because they're so small that you'd have to bend over and look at it so that's the reason why they put them on these stands that have shelves on several levels now this this species of tree a pine they grow on mountains and especially this style represents a tree growing on a cliff or a mountain top so on those graduated stands you would always put it on the top level so this would be a top level tree or the other alternative is usually when you do have the show he stands sometimes you have like a long low stand next to it and you can put it on one of those routes stance and have it facing towards the larger stance so you can have it as a complimentary tree to your show in stand so but it's healthy it's doing well the needles are very short it looks like it was recently imported whose tree is it it's yours him is getting treated heat you've gone two or three times on buying trips to japan with doug paul and when doug brings in trees then he brings in trees for a suit then at the same time often probably probably it was from japan and sooth in likes show he in style trees so obviously it came in you know through a suit then because he has a lot of customers that do want this style of tree which is very pretty it does look quite wild so the question you don't you'll ask them later on ok means really low so it's a ground hugging tree this is the door for variety the the species has larger leaves there we call it japanese garden juniper's but in japan they grow actually at sea side across and they form huge mats in japan and even when you buy them at local nurseries they're there they're just these round greenmount sometimes they're sold as green mountain june you'll get a more upright looking tree mind you it's it's a terrible job to try to get a thick trunk with these trees because they have a tendency never to get a thick trunk i have seen some with trunks about this big but there are forty fifty sixty seventy years old so they're very very old trees they do have a tendency the top gets too thick or a part of the tree will get too thick and then shade out all the others and all the inside will die so you have to keep pruning thinning them out so to get the light into them that they do make pretty bone sigh and most people when they think of a bone side because these used to be the malt sigh you know like a shopping mall and bone si so all the trees being sold sold so the experts called them all thought ok and and they were the trees that were being sold and all the shopping malls at christmas time and father's day and mother's day that's what they would sell but they're not indoor trees basically very hard to grow them indoors because they're so susceptible to spider mites and you know they don't like the dry air inside but they would get them very cheaply and sell them by the thousand so do try to keep them as an outdoor tree this one maybe sometimes you can make a ball inside out of a mall side but it takes years of reworking it ok so this one the only thing is we have a little bit of a problem this branch is coming toward you this way but this is the back of the tree that way but if we look at it from this side this is coming the here but this branch is coming way around the the other side so we've got it's like two trees and one doesn't want to be a cascade or doesn't want to be an upright tree it's very hard and the two trunks are about the same thickness so it's hard to sort of  find the proper solution that would incorporate the two trees so you've got two options you can cut this off and janet and then bring this this branch around more to the front and then it out so and just keep this one trunk or if you want to incorporate that into the bone side design you would have to let's see what's the best front probably you would have to use this side of the tree and take some of this off and tilt it this way and and bring this up in order to try to there's a too much of a gap but if you bring this up and this down and bring this forward then you can sort of cordon ate the two synchronized them and create something much more interesting as a bone side there's a little branch here that i would actually even try to bring up a little bit and then down to fill that gap even more so probably you know once you've been growing into trunk so long you become so attached to them you can't think of separating them so probably the best solution would be to do something around like this who's the owner of this one ok this  had collected orphan trees of a man who died young and suddenly and sandy made me a wonderful deal because it was sick and had a lot of brown in it and just popped on them so i spent the and then secondly and then secondly to yes always waiting until the tree has regained its health route before doing any type of major work on the tree because obviously as a doctor any of us know if if a patient goes in hospital very very weak and you do major major surgery usually the patient won't survive same thing with you know with bone size with people trees and people are the same way so you really do want to wait until the tree is healthy growing well then do your major work so now it's ready it's ready and i think that you can do that juniper as you can even wire and work on during the summer and so if you do and tilt it this way a little bit i think you can do something quite interesting out of it by using the two trunks  ok if it do i prefer if it was mine i i guess so because you see this this if if i kept even one only trunk it's a little bit awkward because you see this branch here that is balancing the side is coming out too high and the parallel with the upper branch makes the you know the apex of the tree and this one here is very long and full but the tree has no no taper at all so if we cut this off and do it it will hide a bit but still you've got a little bit of reverse taper and that parallel branching so it's not the greatest tree as a single trunk tree so again if you wanted to make it look a little bit better by incorporating using as much material as you can to plump it all up fill it out then at least it looks better like like to look like tom brady but it's not going to happen even if you go to the gym every day you know some some trees are people have more potential than others ok so in that case you just make the best of them and bring out the most of their potential what potential they have and it can it can be a very good possible bone size that it will never be a great  ok that's good that's good to ok so we've got a little chinese film here the first thing that strikes me with this tree is there's a huge pruning scar in the front and that bothers me and it's sticking out it looks just it back and cut off the little excess would here you cut a little disc of wood about a piece of wood about the thickness of a popsicle stick and just about the same diameter of as the cut and you push it against the cut you made and then you wire it tightly to the tree and so when it heals it can that the scar tissue can heal outwards so it closes in on itself and forms  so it is pretty antique the plastic is so old it's got yellowed sheets there's a lot of things becoming very antique around the understand household  and you bring it right down in there so it's the lower than the trunk and then you'd put this over the top and then i get bone so i wire and i try it very very very tightly so then when it it's a bit thicker than this the wood or or anything that's very hard and it presses down so when it does heal it as i say it heals inward so it's on the top yeah yeah it depends how quickly it  heals over but it takes maybe a year or two sometimes i'll put a little bit of rubber tubing because i don't want to wire to bite into the trunk and make a second damage but it takes a year or two for it to heal over and close it depends on the size of the sometimes of the big cut like that kind of a big disk and tie it there ok you really do so it depends on how much it has to grow in ok if it's a real big cut sometimes you can fill it or if it's very low you have to fill  with some concrete or something hard i usually sometimes i'll put in a blow in insulation that foam that orange foam sometimes i'll put you know you can buy this these little tubes of sort of in a poxy cement that you cut a little piece and then you need it and it and i'll stick it in the if it's a deep deep hole that i've carved out then i'll put some in and then let it heal over that so i'll do that ok of the tree the rest of the tree the base is good the base is good with this tree there's some roots sticking out they should be cut off when they come up like that it's not very pretty but the tree just needs more ramification and more filling out it's it's a little bit too young looking because the branches are not that well ramified yet so especially the top you want it to become quite large dome more of a dome here it's good but keep it opened up like this keep it sort of a roughly round shape here and get more ramifications just prune it back and let it grow prune it back let it grow so it just takes a lot of fertilising to get it to grow a lot and then cut it by let it grow cut it back the shape of the tree is good the base of the tree is good it's got safer that's good the heights good it's a little bit tall for that diameter but with years it'll catch up that and then it'll fill out better ok and then i and then you can cut back the root ball and put it back in a pot the size later but in order to heal over and to grow out and ram ok ok here we've got we've got a colorado spruce now spruce or there's the there's a collector that's discovered a source of dwarf spruce somewhere out west in the last convention i was at they had probably about fifteen or twenty for a workshop some of the trunks were about this big and they were dwarf the none of the made classical bone side but boy they made a nice bone saw and especially with ryan neal doing the working on them boy they were sweet sweet sweet trees i mean they did some nice things with them the japanese don't like the large needle size of this type of juniper but again in north america you use this species of trees you can  just came up a little bit here it has to go back the only thing is i don't like the tilt on it very much i think i would  would i would i would put it at that level ok it makes it much more pleasing to be at that level ok right away you get the the the right right angle and the t let's follow through on this metaphor ok yes you know and be in a different direction then the trunk is moving you know i was wondering about bending the top in the other direction to the right as opposed to leaving you through that no i think i think the choice was good because this side of the tree is basically empty you see how these branches have been swept over here to fill it out here and this is brings that out so your tree is actually moving from right to left this branch is just what i could almost call it a filler branch but eventually most of your tree will be this triangle ok and to bring it back this way and appreciate the curves that what you're looking for in a tree is harmony repetition not you know it's like music there's repetitions but each repetition there's a slight variation in that to make it interesting and here you have this wonderful curve and here you have another one not quite identical a bit larger and then you have another one and you know that that's what makes the street interesting because you see the harmony and a little bit of the disharmony in it and so this branch is is actually the second if now it fills out the bottom of the  eventually when the other branches fell out it's quite unnecessary ok because the trees moving this way to emphasize these curves here ok so that's why i think it was a good idea to bring this  p down gives the look of the weight of the snow the age and completes the shape that the curve the curve the curve the curve ok so it's good it was well done don't bring it back that way to he was a man before his time i was talking to you earlier as we started off on the advantages of using native trees and collected trees you know and he was out on grand  all of these other places collecting these wonderful trees and the club members were ready for it because they were still doing the mall side type of role and so on now all the members are ready for a collected tree is they want to do these fabulous trees and he's getting out of it because the guy's too old to go to like thing or they've built up all of the his collecting areas you well that's another problem so but i hear you still a will occasionally collect for a selected people so if you can if you're real nice to him maybe he will do that and get you some one time probably about not quite ten years ago but probably about eight or nine years ago i came here and there was a collected cedar and he turned white cedar in a box right in front of that building on the ground and i looked at it and i said to him i said to sandy is that tree for sale he goes no rod collected it and it's going to sooth in two things coming in picking up this week so i said to sandy  how much did he pay rod for the time he says something like seventy five dollars and then i saw it in the show and and sue thin had wired into the most beautiful cascade it was it was outstanding and i think he sold it for eight thousand dollars yeah i mean sue thin is an outstanding artist but that was a great tree  so somebody was under a price than maybe somebody is a little over priced but there must be some meaning between the middle there is some you know you are yeah but rod did get out some beautiful trees over the years ok well maybe that's why i don't recognize it but it's pretty or now that when you bought it i'm sure it's a pretty tree it's actually a garden juniper that was transformed into a bone saw and it looks like if it's there you know the dead wood is great but with these junipers the wood is so dark and it's a small tree you have to bring out the dead wood so this type of tree you would really want to treat it with lime sulphur and really whitening it up and then get in there and brush this even more so  be even red or ok and then you get that bright green moss at the base which sets off all of the reddish living bark in the white dead bart this there are some juniper's you don't want to treat maybe with lime s remove the old barca's you want you want to make them look old but this one needs it ok because the dead wood is so pretty in there it's really outstanding the dead wood and you want it to show up and there's a little bit of just a touch of reverse taper because of the dead wood there not having roots so if you bring the mosque up to that you won't see it the other parts the other parts are very good some of this is getting long now the new tendency in pruning juni  it's a bit dark in here to show you exactly but you get in with scissors that's a little bit better ok and you really have to thin them out so all of this all of the weaker little branches are removed ok so on this bottom one i'll just remove some more here ok now you've removed all the fine it lets the light in and then you wire them down and open them up and just let them go out and then cut them back when they grow and when they become very strong then you cut them back more and then they'll send out new growth but it very fine growth all along and you can get a very beautiful you know cloud shaped formations with them the tendency now is not to pinch them by they found out that that just slows down the growth so you thin them out wire them to get the light in and then at the end of the year cutting back ok i either in the late fall or in early spring you you do that but it is a nice tree a little bit this this layer here is growing into this do you really need this part here you know ok good good  s this is pretty i mean it's a little bit straight there but you've given it by bringing the foliage here and by dropping it slightly below this dead wood it's featuring all this dead with this this this here so you do need this branch here it's it's balancing on this side of the tree no no no no no that's it's quite good no it's coming along well  the feature of this tree again is it's a small size but it's a very powerful tree because it's short the base is very large so it looks powerful and with the dead wood makes it it's the dead wood spectacular in this part in this part here of this tree so you really want that to show up and the foliage is just like you know when you buy a picture we when before you put it in the frame you get matting and nowadays it's not enough to have one mat sometimes you have sort of like two or three you know there's a line of gold and then there's you know red and you know and this is like the matting around the tree the the interesting section of the tree is this powerful base rate going on in here ok and the rest is to frame that all around the matting ok and so that's really quite quite an interesting tree because of that so you don't want the branches to grow out too much you just want them to take it up and have better ramification so that you can actually keep on seeing this as a question on the left i mean that you know this one here are yeah right there yes well again she can just wire away one just pull of the bit already just slightly pulling it and you can see it goes it's really pretty even with the light on also featuring it so that is and this you can pull down a little bit not as low as that but the guy wire it you know you've got wire here just pull it down just slightly this way ok and just so you can see into it a little bit more ok that's a good tree that the oddly enough the pot usually i'm always dissing people because they're putting their own site and pots that are too fine see and they're taking away from the simplicity and the beauty of the tree this one is a very powerful tree and yet it's a very soft feminine part so it should go into a more rectangular part maybe with one of those little picture frame types of things but something that's more powerful and masculine to match the tree ok good nice tree and i didn't remember that she bought it from me i really didn't yes really boy i don't even smell the  cooking for the cookout you has it does anyone know maybe the wind's blowing the other way usually when i smell it then i sort of say oh i finished the lecture demo or we're ok here we have a nice little  and so it's still very adolescent ok so so you do one you do want to let it grow older and that takes the thinker trunk so again you know even though you want to keep it this height you might wan put it in a slightly larger pot not so much larger but deeper for a few years to fatten up the base ok the soil is a little bit compact just around the base so there might be some of the original soil that it was growing in so try to eventually change all the soil don't let some of the mosses growing up the trunk and elms have very soft bark and it will rot away the trunk so get up brush where's my orange bank here brush and always take away the mosse covering the base of the tree on the ground on the soil surface it's fine but not on the base of the tree ok because it's such a soft bark it will rot out very very quickly now you know this this tree they do like probably twenty million of them every year in china it's called the one and a half tw tree yeah it is even the chinese call it is a twist in the house ok so they do this one and a half twist thing and then the export them and it's really hard to do anything else with  you have to keep it at this size because if you let it grow taller then it always has this weird little twist at the base so it's better to keep it about this height but you just want to her bark your old trunk so you are going to have to keep whoever's tree it is a shorter tree ok you're going to have to keep it shorter like that but again occasionally put it in a larger pot to thicken it up this now the other problem with your tree is you see the branches were all wired downwards which is good but now you haven't wired enough and the tips are all going swinging upwards so you do have to wire them back down that's what makes the tree look older to all of these things have to be wired down you see up here have to be wire down so that's the other thing you want is to you have to maintain the spawn side in in a certain style ok and so that's very important to do that and just keep on growing it and as i say put it in slightly larger part for a few years is sort of like a little bit cation and then you can put it back into the smaller part cut back the roots more but if you want to see it look older that's what you're going to have to do just looking at it from here is that that first ranch on the right here this yeah the only branch on the right it is like there's a big gap between that and we'll just let it go on proving you know if people are are always pruning because they think they have to yeah it would be best to let it i don't have any elm fully edge but if you do see let this grow out that way then there will be as much of a gap so you just have to let this grow a bit longer and and just don't prune it and then it will catch up and grow longer or you can shorten this one this one's a bit too long you can shorten it a bit cut it back to you know especially this the stick and right here so there's two ways of doing it shortening branches that are too long or letting branches that are too short grow out and say do i want this branch to be longer or shorter and what does that have to be do i want this one to be longer you see you need a sort of roughly triangular shape and one branch will be growing out of the triangle has to be cut  back so as i say often the top is very strong so you have to cut back very severely whereas a lower branches you just cut back a little bit so you're always trying to create a balance in all the different growing parts of the tree so some need to three come out of a bigger pot what would be a good this isn't about thought you know elves are not going for flowers or fruits or anything either they're a very simple tree so most of the time they're playing in the brown unglazed pots and this pot is actually the right size for this tree but as i say if we wanted to age it and mark it up in that you have to give it a little bit more space to grow in the beginning you can actually put it back in this pot or another brown on glazed thought well rounded or just secure leroux or square pots are all made for a tree that is not very triangular they don't have longer branches this one does have longer branches on both sides so it does need to go into a triangular or an oval pot ok so it's one of the two but it's not a bad size of pot for the tree and the tree is off centered so all of that's good with the tree it's just that i'd like to see a little bit more maturity with the tree good ok next ok this is a sweet little tree it's called in japan a blind to hysteria the reason why they call it blind is because it never flowers and hysteria are growing for flowers but recently i've heard in japan they've gotten three or four to flower so i don't know what the trick is judy asked me this morning she said it was her tree i don't know i mean they've been around a long time in japan  actually it is you know and an ignorant to mean how to how to get them to flower but it's it's a typical with steria well with harry are not really trees they're not really shrubs they're sort of a of binding plant they don't really vine they sort of lean against rocks or trees and grow up them they call them in french while you've been is the attach and so this one's been made into a tree like shape almost a broom shape i'd like to see a little bit more space actually some of these brought down to create a slightly more triangular look to it so this one brought down a little bit more here this one there and this one over on this this side here this down a little bit more here and this down a little bit more here just to open it up let the light in all right that's what i would like to see with this  one the tree is dead centered in the pot try not to dead center it this tree is actually wider on this side so it would go off more sward this side of the pot the pot is not a bad  it's a pretty pot it's probably sarah rayner you know it's not a bad choice because the trees very rounded color well usually pick a color of pot that will offset the flowers on the tree but i don't think we're going to get flowers and but maybe for whist area they're set heavy they require huge amounts of water so sometimes you use deeper pots  for with steria they're almost like me people sometimes we used to keep them in water little saucers of water so they would dry out during the summer but then they don't flower as well if you give them water constantly because they  they send out too much vegetative growth so now i don't put my my was steria in in in saucers of water anymore but i do use deeper pots for my was steria the other thing is to steria flower only one time in the spring so we after they finish flowering you prune them very severely very hard you prune them back and then let them just grow the rest of the year unless they send out some vines some long long new growth you can cut that back but the rest of the summer you leave them so they can build up their strength and energy for new for flowers and also the flowers are at the tip so if you prune back the tips join the fall the summer the fall or the winter then you don't get flowers as i said this is sort of an and enigma i do not have a blind with terry and my collection and and it's very very hard to get them to flower but it's still a pretty very very pretty good you're welcome himalayas i was i was mistaken because the brevard folios do come from the middle east and they have such the reason why bready means small and they do have a very very small foliage i was saying from three or four feet away you would swear that this is a spruce or you know really a dwarf spruce not a true cedar and the only thing is they're not hardy in winter here you can plant them out in the garden you have to keep them in a cool greenhouse but it is a very pretty tree and very vigorous also now david has chosen to keep one side of the tree and make it look very wild the only thing is you don't have enough of a top and maybe it slanted just a touch  too much toward the back david so if we can put it into a pot and tilt it a little bit more this way and then bring up the top and bring bring down all of these branches a little bit more now to make to make just bring this up a little bit and then all of these downwards you're going to have a much more effective bonsai and right now this is too far away from your dead wood so by bringing this up a little bit more and then filling out all of this we have to create a sort of a early in an english means sort of a meeting point between the foliage and the dead wood it can't be too far away or you can boil some hot water and dip some rags in it and then you wrap them around this while they're boiling hot and bend it closer to here ok you put a wire and then heat it  up and after you remove the wire it'll keep the shape that's how they make you know that bent wood furniture they get they get wood in the steam it in bend it into shape so you can bend dead  ok but you want it closer either by moving this closer here or or a little bit of both would even be better ok now the tree is lovely but it's losing its its cloud shape formation so all of these need to be wired out flatter like this over here you can have a floating foliage pad but just slightly above it this has to come down a bit with the floating foliage pad here so you just need it just needs a good wiring job and it will be a fantastic small tree that's all it needs so it'll take maybe two or three hours of your time how much doctors get paid here in the states maybe you use too much maybe you should hire somebody to do it for you would probably be cheaper david can yeah sure sure that's what i do yeah well the wood is still fresh when you create it you wired into shape and you let it dry you know it takes two or three months and you move the wire and you've got the engine in the exact perfect place so that's a good thing too but it has a very nice the bari the the dead wood here should be shortened a bit and become closer of the trunk but the fact that david wanted to make it look more like a landscape it looks like an old tree in the landscape so he put it in a very long narrow very shallow part to make it look landscape and it's very pretty because it does look like an old solitary tree you know like there's a picture everybody has in their house of some some juniper or no is that cypress in california next to where is it in california but i've seen it yeah monterey and there is the lone cypress and the shape is exactly like this one so probably has one of those pictures in his house a nice trying to design it to look like that monterey cypress good just wire it please do we have time for just we we have five minutes we can get through one or two i gave it how are you fine what do i want both start with one each cult of our you have about each us species of kamma sipress in japan has about eight to nine hundred cult of ours there are always mutating constantly so you have any type of foliage you want with these so this was a very very short dense one it's probably nina grest phyllis but maybe even nina grass selous or ram or something but i couldn't tell you you have to know when you buy it you have to buy it from somebody who really knows what the cult of are is when the multiply it when they do cuttings of it so this one was a little nursery tree and the foliage pads are just getting too thick the pruning of  exactly the same as the pruning of the juniper as i was telling you about you don't want the pines to become too thick so you get in there and thin them out you remove all the weak fully edge and you leave the stronger branches and then wire them out so if we look at this tree we're getting these lichen juniper's we're getting these fat pompoms at the end it's not looking like clouds anymore it's looking like pompom so we have to remove some of them so  ok now we're going to ask the owner's permission to at least that's whose tree is a serious ok can i have i have it ok and they never form a top their genetic dwarf they just want to spread out ok this is a genetic dwarf it doesn't want to form a top so you raise the branch to form the top but half the tree still you know wants to be the top t so it just wants to be a big round bush so you have to let this part grow out raise it up a bit more and let it grow out so it will become a top that's what that's why because you're fighting against the trees nature which genetically says i want to say i want to stay a midget ok i don't want to grow up so well maybe midgets do want to grow up but anyway but the tree wants to so we're going to get in there and open some of this up ok that's the sun lunch and oh boy phones going off telling us luncheons ready that's the signal ok so i will not touch this ok i will here this is a very strong branch and it's getting too thick because you have three branches coming out so i will cut back one of the three only be two and then those because they are so strong would have to be would have to be thinned quite a bit and kept thin and small so i'll just do that for one second here and we'll let everyone get to lunch afterwards but before i go there's there's somebody that wants to say something so i'll let i'll let you guys say what you have to say thank you david you're get and so we knew it had to be unique because you guys are unique and millbrook is unique it's been an important place for many of us over the years so we commissioned and original piece of art which we would like to present to you today and what's even more unique is that we're going to have all of you help us with this piece of art  that's a good idea i wouldn't know upside down artwork that we have sandy before you go today jay is selling raffle tickets for the demo tree that's over here and also very nice shiny elm and a heart well again for those that weren't here this morning thank you for inviting me and we're starting off on a little conscience but not really this afternoon i'll be doing a demonstration with the japanese you taxes cusp adata and although they're not native they do very well in our climate they're they're grown as heads trees foundation plantings and that's what i was talking to you about this morning one of the best collecting areas is you know urban sites bandon homes or buildings or hedges and vanessa brought this tree in for some advice and she actually dug this one out and two others with a little bit of perlite innit a lot of perlite because it seems to be doing very well i bought some big ones from a nursery and i put in beautiful bonsai soil and they haven't been doing as well so maybe next time i'll try soil recipe and put them in in pro mix with a lot of perlite ok this is the reason why i wanted to talk about it for a few moments is not only because vanessa wanted some advice on the tree but also i think it's very  appropriate to the tree we're working on and how we should deal with collected trees this tree was obviously in someone's garden collected and vanessa put in the smallest box possible but now the tree is in recovery stage you see almost all of this is new growth and it's coming directly from the trunk which is wonderful news do that these they have adventitious buds on unlike pines and spruces and firs so they can pop out f anywhere along the trunk and you wouldn't use old thick branches like this in your design you're going to use all the new ones now the tree we will you cannot really do any heavy pruning or any  carving because if you carve it's going to move in the box and you can actually kill this tree it's just sending out new roots and the roots are very roots of use are very thick they're white the fleshy and if it moves in the in this box they're going to break the break very easily so a collected tree you leave about two years to recover that does not mean that in the meantime can sort of plan the future of the tree so first of all you look around and you see what can i use as my top what would be the best part because you can certainly help the tree in the meantime looking looking all around it at the root splayed because that's what you used to term in the front of the tree i've actually determined but the best front is here because you have a very good display of roots here and here ok and you've got a thick one that's a little bit thick coming out there but it's not too bad so the best part of the the tree is just about in here so that would be the future in front of the tree now that said you say ok if i leave them two years these branches will be too thick probably to move around so what am i going to do with the tree you don't want to bone side that's too big and scraggly or leg so you see how these branches are sending out new growth the future the top of the tree is going to be this branch that we're going to bring around here and then we're going to drop this branch this will be our first branch this will be a second there is a good back branch right in here that we can take and even when they're young like this very gently with a number two wire one and a half wire we can bring it downwards and this side is just sending out new growth the best new growth would be here or a little bit further back but this is still weak so at this time we don't really want to prune anything all you would do is if there's too much growth i would remove some and then i would gently just use some wire and bring it down and if it's a thick branch like this i would open it up so it would get more light it would let the light in and it would but back even more so you prepare the tree for its future as a bone size without doing any major cutting off this or cutting off the outer carving don't do that yet let the tree recover but very gently very gently you can bring branches into place knowing that this is going to be the top knowing that this is going to come down over here knowing that this is going to come slightly and give give them useful bends now if they're this is a bit scraggly but you can remove some fine buds in here and just give it some beautiful curves and this one here not only can you give this main branch a curve but even wire some of these out like that to get it ready so eventually all of this top stuff will go but we have to wait until this gets strong enough before we can start cutting back all the big long thick branches so it's a it's got wonderful promise because with this is the front you see the beautiful taper of the tree you've got this beautiful this will be a gin this dead wood here it will all be white and you'll have beautiful all of this will be cut back here so you'll have jinn's of different length here all coming out here you can cut this back short have a nice little gin coming up here and then very shorter gins toward the back and you can even above this this top here you can have a nice gin top gin done with all this part of the tree so it's going to be a great bone sigh and just just requires a couple of years of patience and preparation to make it a great  so this is the kind of material you're looking for when you want to do bone sigh and work on material like that people are afraid of big trees because they say well it's too heavy to carry around and it's to this into that but it's only going to make a very small bo july actually be able to get in a very tiny pot it'll be a one man bone sigh one one person can easily carry it around so don't be intimidated by big trees because you work them down to a small size tree ok any questions about this one well inside two years in the life of a tree is relatively negligible there's it's not that much and two years in the life of a man is not this one is also a japanese you taxes cusp a taxus yes because the data probably capita it's a variety that grows very upright very straight that doesn't mean with wiring you can't bring it down and make a great bonsai out of them this came from a nursery in connecticut i believe the man sells nursery stock that he cuts down to bone side people at all the conventions his name is mark comstock and  it's not as interesting as the tree you brought in because it doesn't have the huge base your tree had and it doesn't have the taper and it doesn't have the movement that was given by several branches taking over at the top throughout the life of your tree but still you know when you see material like this certainly don't turn your nose up at it i thought here maybe two or three years ago had bought it and so i said to sandy i'll buy it from you and bring it back to montreal and then for this weekend he didn't have a demo tree so he says you're not buying it anymore it's had the demo tree and it's going to be auctioned off so not that i mind i have too many trees anyway but but it is a it is a good tree to work on either it's a demo tree or a project tree and this is a good size to work on to the branches are thicker than vanessa's you know and so we're going to have to use thicker wire and maybe can't bend them down at as dramatic an angle but still it's a good tree to work on the trouble with this one as i say it wants to be the cap a tad wants to grow up in a column they want to be very straight and so a lot of the branches are going upwards probably this one was i don't know why it is and a lot of the trees i've bought from this mark comstock have all been knocked over by farming equipment or  nursery quitman this one looks like it was hit by a tractor also it's all broken here at the base and here it's damaged so the tree instead of going straight you know was knocked over and started growing sideways so if you see a tree like this growing sideways you say well why not take advantage of it i mean i can increase the sideways movement make it more slanting or if i want i can correct it and bring it a little bit further up but and usually i don't accept the given shape given the angle that it was planted that this one is pretty good it's pretty much to my taste so i think i'm going to leave it like that now i have a choice there's you know you can choose several fronts for a tree you know when you see all the illustrations in the japanese magazines they have it from numbered from one to eight and they stole each possible front mind you a lot of those trees were nursed were grown for bone size so they do have more than one possible front you don't with all the trees with this one this side here and this side over here are too narrow they're not very pretty so we only have two fronts or variations on two side or this side ok there's not much more in the way of fronts the unfortunate part about this side is we only see one big root and it comes curving around the around the front of the trunk and where that tree was damaged by some equipment some heavy equipment it's broken there and the fork is not very pretty on the side so i think we're going to actually turn the tree one hundred eighty degrees and actually choose this side as the front because here we have a route here and a big one here which is very pretty with a slanting trunk needs to have if you start to fall over we stick out our foot like that old ourselves up so the root on the opposite side of the angle should be stronger and this does have the stronger root the tree actually did that as a reaction to falling over to profit self up better so this is more natural the flow is better we've got a nice dead part of the trunk here that we can use as a gin here to give it a little bit the bottom of the trunk is not that interesting but if we scrape that and make a gin out of it it can be quite pleasing the rest of the tree is pretty whole harm it's not a great tree but again the wonderful thing about taxes are huge trees is that they'll send all but anywhere along the trunk so we can literally u finer branches if we want and say oh in two or three years like the nessus tree that will grow and that'll be a beautiful trunk so i don't worry too much about it even if i'm missing a branch somewhere i don't worry about it with  you because i know something will grow in and take its place so i should if i do have a pin here do a drawing of how i see this future tree try to find a clean sheet of paper here this one's dirty bonsai people are always dealing in  buy a lot of tickets because it's going to make a real nice bonsai really sweet you'll regret it if you don't buy tickets i'm being paid for saying all of this obviously share all right so this is this is the teacher design of this trait this is what it will look like ok it's not a radical transformation of from what the tree originally was we just have to prune away the extraneous branches and the extraneous foliage ok and then lower the other ones to create clearly it's pads now these use are probably probably one of the best trees for pruning all the topiary on those estates like downton abbey in england what are they made from what type of injury from use the mazes the famous labyrinths that you see at all those old castles and and england are made from what use again use are a fascinating tree they there's many specimens in england that date back three four thousand years because they were a sacred tree to the druids so the druids would have their ceremonies and groves of huge trees and so they were a protected area they were a sacred ground and then when christians moved in and started building churches around the sacred ground used were left there to incorporate the you know that religion into the christian religion and they built cemeteries around them so the trees were protected and they're very very very old they grow a long time also they do  have a type of resin that's poisonous to like deer and humans the of the flesh of the berries is quite poisonous and but you can use  history that has managed to survive for millions of years and it has some very interesting properties to it so birds eat the seeds but the flesh is poisonous so yes we have to  prune it and it will make a very interesting bone size so that's the next step now this is our main trunk line from here we're going to follow the trunk up now here it's a little bit bare why again because somebody some equipment or animal got in there and gnawed way all the trunk so it's all it's all eaten away so we have natural sherry you never turn up your nose at natural sherry because that's part of the the history of the tree you don't want to get rid of it it's empty but again we can bring branches down and fill it in it's not going to bud back because all this wood is dead but you just fill in you take something from another branch and fill it in two so we're going to keep that now there's a crossing branch over here that's it's a little bit awkward it's long and i can't really bring it down so i'm going to cut this one back a bit now you is hard what did what else did they use that the would have you trees for in england longbows now robin hood and his men all had a long bows made out of  know that's that's you know i'd have to eat it ingest it so i don't worry too much  ok now there's a big fat black branch here that it's way too long so that will come off completely i forgot how big this tree was when i when i reserved it sandy said you're going to be using this you and i thought oh it's not i don't remember it being that big yet they do know this one i'm going to be using that saw i just had a moment ago or did i put it or i have a bigger so here it is now this one is judging out too much from my design so this will be and finally last but not least this big one here sticking up now when you're cutting branches from trees like this never cut them off completely because you do strip them and use them as gins we don't always we leave them longer and we don't  always leave them that length eventually will will break them and peel them and make them shorter but in the beginning you always want to be on the safe side and leave them longer and also when you break them you need a you need to purchase in order to grab them with your pliers and and bend them and break them so ok so now we're going to prune away some of the foliage we don't need 's is if he wanted a band a big trunk or shorten a tree he would sell way part and then he would take the living part of the cabby him and split it and lower it into the ground well he did it with juniper even with some pines but you use it never worked you can't split away the living vein and so i had to find other ways to work with them so if you see them in his books there's none or very few there's like only one or two demonstrations and it's mostly carving because he couldn't get away doing on use what he did with the other trees so they are particular that way but they do make this wonderful beautiful old polished wood when you remove the outer layer of bark it's it's bright red so it does make a wonderful tree in a show with the bright red bark and the did the white dead wood so always begin when you're doing a bone saw i always begin by imagining what the future shape of the tree is you have to know before you start working what you're going to do with the tree and then you can start by by pruning away branches because if you do it the other way you're in big trouble you don't know where you're going and then you go damn i should've left that branch  you know it's it's i've seen too many people just start pruning a tree without knowing where they are what they're going to do with it where they're going with it and that's the highly dangerous i've i've had some people in workshops that you by the time you get to them there's like two branches left on the whole terrain your goal my god what do they do how is this the whole my ever going to do anything with it now so it can be pretty dangerous so always always study the tree first sometimes even i'm stumped i'm not stumped stampede by stymied by a tree i just can't figure it out and it'll be sitting there in the nursery for weeks months even years and i'll be looking at that tree and sometimes unconsciously you know like recently we're moving so all my bones i tables aren't set up yet so i had to put all the trees i always tell my students never put your trees on the ground or on the grass because then the earthworms and ants and everything will get and sure enough they're all at my house on the ground on the grass because i just didn't have any place to put them but sometimes even the fact that they're lower down or they were turned around and you go by watering them and you go hello i never thought of that look at that the way this tree looks like now you know i mean and you get this brainstorm this idea and the you know that conundrum of what to do with that assault and so it doesn't come instantaneously and as i said this morning i mean the only way you're ever going to be do it properly is by really studying  exhibitions studying trees in other trees and shows and learning about it so you'll know what to do with the tree ok we're going to carve off some just peel off some of the dead wood now this whole gathering smells like insect repellent it's like it's sort of a very disconcerting smelled to to all of you and it's like oh my god it's like i'm having trouble breathing up here  now i don't have a good branch on this side of this this one was too big and i want something over here so as you can see i'm leaving a stub and then i'm going to bend this one down that's no problem with time it'll be resolved either it'll grow something new or i can i can carve down part of the thick part and it'll it'll all work itself out people the biggest enemy to doing bones is people that are fearful it's a big tree i'm afraid of working on it or it's i don't know what to do so i'm not going to do anything and then the bone side never gets created or done because people or i afraid if i cut off the trunk little die or i'm just afraid so i won't do anything and and then the tree never gets done and you never have a bone cycle action so you have to get in their hands on and work on the tree and you know take take your fear in stride and say look you know i mean i just want to work on the tree it's not going to die if i do this work and i'll be able to create a nice you don't want to be too how how can i put it too drastic in your pruning the better you know if you prune a little bit at a time that's much better not all in one fell swoop but  still you have to have that master plan and then just start working towards it you know with with vanessa now the new that was here in the box just a few minutes ago now she has a rough idea and social she'll say oh well ok that's what i'm going to do with it saw i know which branches to keep so once you've got the idea the rest is easy it's like follow the numbers and they're very easy to peel at this time of year because it's a very active they're active at this time it's a very active growing period in the life of the tree so there's a lot of sop running up in the sap pleasure if you wait too long after you cut off the dead wood then you're in big new because you actually have to scrape it and it can take hours and hours and hours once the once the has dried out so you're better off doing it now than later and also if you allow the branch to dry out a bit don't start to lime sulfur it right away you know what the lime sulfur is it product it's a fungicide that's used mainly for spraying apple trees in the or fruiting trees in the early spring or fall and it's made out of lime and sulfur it's it comes out oranges orange liquid you buy it in any garden center and usually used you dilute it in water and spray it on the trees as a fungicide bonsai people use it pure in a spear form concentrated and they painted on to the dead wood with a little paint brush and it comes out orange but after two or three days exposed to humanity it'll turn white white white and it preserves the dead wood but also makes a deadly would look very very old because that's what happens on mountaintops so yes but you wait at least one to three months even you can wait a year after you've carved dead wood before putting on the lime sulphur use are very resistant to rot they just it's a very hard wood because it's it's resinous oils in use they just don't rot very quickly so you can go a long time without treating it but it's very spectacular when you do put on the white colored it's not opaque it's very clear but it becomes very spectacular when you do put it on because you see all the white areas contrasting with the red for bark of the tree that's very pretty what's that we haven't seen much of that  this branch here is weak and it's also crossing the lower trunk so i think we'll make a very short gin with this one also also makes less one less branch to wire so when when it's the end of the day when you're tired yeah yeah you have to air well i'm not one of those experts that say oh they cut off almost all the branches and say all you'll have in a tree in fifteen or twenty years that's what they often tell these bones i beginners i'm not like that i want the tree to look very full and beautiful even when it's first ok so we've done a lot of the dead wood is there any more oh this one here this one's going to be pretty spectacular this lower branch wasn't cut off that much that long ago because it's still alive in there still the beginning of it is still has a can be i'm not intact now it looks a little bit high but when you lower the soil and put in the pot it'll be a very dramatic and beautiful maybe it's a bit hard for you to seek as it's right at the trunk level the the trunk base why do we always do the dead wood the jinns before starting working doing the wiring why would that be excuse me not really stability that's it we're using them often to anchor the wire on to the tree and if and if it's not done if you wrap wire around it you'll never be able to scrape it and then the wood will dry out and then you're in big trouble because as i say it takes days sometimes to scrape away all the the old bark once it's dried up so you know ok sometimes also you see this is all the old bark to clean it up real nice so that the front looks good you remove it with a little knife here and then we're going to polish the bit now that all the base of the tree right here was damaged this is rough this is very easy roast edges so that would not be the equipment that did that that would be some rodent that ate away the base of the tree probably died after eating cactus bark but so that's interesting well last week i was i was giving a lecture demo on the lawyers eastern white cedars and i started off by talking i was asked to talk about you know the history and how second voyage and his boats he and his men his boats became trapped by ice right not far from quebec city and they couldn't get out so they hastily built this little fort out of logs and and  decided to pass the winter there but they all cut scurvy out of a crew of eighty five twenty five or thirty died within the first while and only three were saved the others were dying and they met in the indian called the naga who was a hero on and when they had seen him months or so before he was very sick probably with the same thing scurvy and when he came back through they saw he was a friendly one and they saw he had been cured so they persuaded him to tell to you no to help them so he sent his some of his colleagues into the into the woods and they got branches of soya and they boiled them in water and mash and made his sailors drink all of all of the broth the infusion from it and even they put the mash on the the limbs that wouldn't work anymore and they within two weeks they were all saved it was very high in vitamin c and caused by a lack of vitamin c so you know we make jokes about animals eating you know eating plants and saving themselves well sometimes they do and some of the most effective  folklore and many many other trees like that and plants have have helped us so yes we depend on them for food but also for medicines for dies for construction material what we're doing and also to gin without plants we would all we wouldn't be here so it's a very important process of of living here on this earth to protect the plants  it's yes i think it's you know some people are just you know the just see plants is well it's the old european attitude of cut him down there in the way you know trees  that now we're starting to gain a new respect for for what trees do for the environment because we're losing so many of them you know it's only when you start lacking something i think that you really grow to appreciate it and  yeah that's our world is getting to that now that pretty soon we'll will start to appreciate what clean air is and  usefulness of trees and forests and everything else