Welcome to the Saruyama Blog, intermittent and generally off topic. Occasionally you might see some trees...and weird ones at that.

Tuesday 29 April 2014

A massive barrel of laughs from the past...

I have been raking through my old hard drives looking for pictures and stuff for the website renewal that I gave up on and asked someone else to do, and I found this file.  I wrote it in November 2007.  Thankfully I never published it anywhere (I don't think).  I think I must have been a bit miserable at the time.

The Beauty of Solitude

If one were to ask most Western Bonsai enthusiasts to name the top three Japanese professionals then the chances are they would name Kunio Kobayashi, Masahiko Kimura and Shinji Suzuki. All three have similar things in common, multiple award winners, superb technicians and visionary artists. Another less obvious bond links these three contemporary greats together; suffering. Each man has gone through painful difficulties in their personal lives, some are well known and publicized, others not so. This is not the place to discuss the detail of their sufferance but it gives us an insight into the Bonsai aesthetic and what makes their trees stand out from the crowd. All three are first generation Bonsai artists, self made men, driven by a burning passion inside which is fuelled by pain, deprivation and in many ways loneliness.

Asking the question “Where do we draw the line between a tree in a pot and a bonsai?”, leads us into a discourse regarding, beauty, aesthetics and the very nature of life itself. Traditional Western aesthetics could be described as the combination of many to create an exquisite whole, layer upon layer of oil paint on a canvas, a vase full of blooms creating a medley of colour and fragrance. It draws us in, inviting us to be part of the landscape, making us feel warm and alive. Diametrically opposed to this is one aspect of the Japanese aesthetic and one which is of absolute importance in creating meaningful bonsai. We must remove all that is unnecessary, stripping away layer after layer until we are left with the essence of the subject. A single flower in a vase, a seventeen syllable poem or a simple cup of tea. Unlike Western gardening, Bonsai comes not from what we add, but what is taken away.

Consider the literati style of tree, the most distilled form of this concept in bonsai. The name, bunjin, is taken from the literati class of scholars, painters and poets; many of whom led ascetic lifestyles and underwent self inflicted hardships. Inspiration for their work came from their suffering; Nanga pictures were often melancholic and yearned for life outside of the restrictive Shogunate which controlled Japan at the time. They expressed the essence of the severe side of nature rather than depicting nature in a realist sense. The ideal image of a literati style tree can be found in the paintings of Ike no Taiga and Yosa Buson who were inspired by the poetry of Matsuo Basho, arguably the father of modern haiku and throughout whose canon of work runs a deep theme of loneliness and isolation; on the passing of the cherry blossoms and upon departure on a pilgrimage he wrote,

“With spring leaving
The birds cry out regret, the fish
Have tears in their eyes.”

The ideal literati tree should create a feeling of solitude in the viewer. Rather than being welcomed into the image and feeling warm, it should make us feel cold and hungry, just as the tree feels, having grown in a harsh environment battling against the elements and deprived of fertile soil. It should not make us unhappy or uncomfortable, solitude should not be confused with such negative feelings; solitude, a personal choice as opposed to the imposition of loneliness is, by implication incredibly liberating. It is an escape from the ties that bind and the pressures that restrict. When viewing the perfect tree we stand alone, like the bunjin centuries before us, on a distant mountainside, far from the madding crowd, free from society and most importantly free from ego.

The last statement implies a high level of empathetic understanding in the viewer; without a personal appreciation of suffering it is almost impossible to transpose oneself to the same place that the artist seeks to represent. In classical terms this is pathos at its most intense level, by observing a tree which appears to have existed on the knife edge between life and death we are made aware of the transience of nature and the fragility of life. Only those who have a personal relationship with death can truly appreciate life, without knowledge of the dark there is no light. A key theme of bonsai is the cyclical relationship between life and death, rebirth and regrowth, one which recurs throughout Japanese aesthetics and philosophy, particularly in one area which the West has an unhealthy obsession with, the Samurai. In focusing upon the supposed fierce loyalty and barbarity of the warrior class we fail to appreciate that many had a serene acceptance of the ephemeral nature of the universe, an understanding of the profundity of life and conversely, the inevitability of death.

Acceptance of sadness is an alien concept in modern society where we are told it is our inalienable right to pursue happiness; sadness does not sell yet it pervades our culture and provides a driving force for many artists in other fields. Composer Benjamin Britten puts it perfectly, “It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and the everlasting beauty of monotony”

Many Bonsai artists both in Japan and the West, including myself, struggle to identify this concept in their creations because of our difficulty in accepting death and the surrendering the self. Only through introspection on the nature of life and a move away from reason and the head can we truly move to a new level of Bonsai, particularly in the logic obsessed West. The question we must ask ourselves is how can reflect our experience and understanding of death in the unique living art form of Bonsai?


Thank god I have cheered up a little bit since then. Still it is all true...

Saturday 19 April 2014

A change of clothes or a change of tack?

Recently I have been working on a number of junipers across Europe and also on a few of my own. This is not an uncommon thing as somewhere across the globe at any given moment, there is a bonsai enthusiast working on and more than likely ruining a juniper, this is what we bonsai enthusiasts do for fun. What has become apparent over the last five or six years of globle trotting professional life is that the majority of people seem to treat all junipers the same no matter what species or foliage variety they are. They all just become junipers and are worked in the same way, Sabina, Rocky Mountain and Itoigawa alike.

Across Europe we have a number of different native junipers but let us take the lowly Sabina as the example here. Much mailgned as a species, they have, as a species an undeserved reputation for being difficult to work on, or they get too leggy or they do this or they do that and they should be abandoned as bonsai material.

 

Across America, they have a number of different native junipers but let us take the Rocky Mountain Juniper as the example here. Much mailgned as a species, they have, as a species an undeserved reputation for being difficult to work on, or they get too leggy or they do this or they do that and they should be abandoned as bonsai material.

Across Japan they had effectively one species of juniper which covered the islands, but with such dramatic difference in foliage characteristics they could almost be considered as different species. Going back over a hundred years ago when the fad for yamadori really kicked off, a wide range of trees were collected across the lands, each with different growth habits and different trunk characteristics, depending on where it came from. Most of us know the words Itoigawa, Kishu and maybe Tohoku but how many know about all the sub varieties and slightly different strains? Itoigawa is just the name of the place where Junipers from that area were sold and although they all had much finer and tighter foliage than other areas, there was still a variance across the trees. Some types grew quickly and had many long thin branches whereas others tended to have short, highly ramified branches and form into clumps. This difference is due to in part to environmental response but also genetic variations, which happen not just across continents but also within populations. On the same mountain side you can find two trees next to each other with different characteristics. However both were given the name Itoigawa but the way in which they are best worked upon is very different.

All classed as Itoigawa trees, all slightly different growth habits...can you tell the difference? Does it really matter?

Many of the collected trees were impossible to compact because they either had leggy branches or they had a poor foliage type. Some trees have a tendency to flower heavily or not at all, some may have limp foliage which leads to a prostate form and others may just have extremely coarse foliage on a small trunked tree. This fundamental natural deviation led the Japanese to graft usable foliage on to the trunks of unusable trees. Out of a hundred collected trees, maybe less than half actually needed grafting, maybe more it is difficult to say now. What is obvious is that through a survivial of the fittest process a few strains of highly efficient and attactive foliage began to develop, replacing all the flowering or leggy, prostrate foliage types and standardising the idea of what Juniperus Chinensis foliage is to the modern bonsai world. We jumped into this hundred year plus process in the last thirty years and we only see the end results.

Many trees that are imported and worked upon by enthusiasts have been container or field grown by a mass producing bonsai farmer and come ultimately from the same parent tree. They chose the foliage type with the best characteristics for creating shohin or dense foliage pads with minimal work and then made thousands upon thousands of cuttings which eventually became the Juniper on your bench which has been selectively bred. This is genetic engineering in action people.

The point I am making is that Japan has been through their period of selective breeding and coming to terms with changing the foliage where necessary on collected species where the foliage proved unsuitable for bonsai. One of my favourite words in Japanese is used to describe this process....衣替え or koromo-gae which means the changing of the wardrobe depending on the season. Around April and October, Lady Saruyama does her koromo-gae and I...well there is no need as dirty jeans, blue hoodies and polo shirts are always in fashion.

Anyway I digress...

So where is this heading...towards the fact that what is good for Itoigawa is not good for Phoenicia. What is done to Kishu should not be done to Sabina. What is accepted practice on a field grown chinensis is almost certain death for a collected Rocky Mountain Juniper. It is also towards the point that not everything that comes out of the mountains is going to be suitable as is for becoming a bonsai. A sabina I have been working on in Poland for several years is showing this to be true. It has a foliage type which is limp and without any serious lignification in the tertiary branches. Limp and lifeless it needs support through wiring to stand up and point to the sun. On top of that it flowers pretty well every year which results in growing tips that cease growing, causing leggy growth with no internal foliage.

This grows alongside another sabina which has a much perkier foliage type, barely flowers at all and after three years of work from freshly collected is possibly another two years away from Noelanders. Both trees get the same conditions, the same care and techniques but one responds well, the other just simply cannot be made into a tree with tight foliage pads.

Looking at these trees can we say that Sabina as a species will never make good bonsai? Nonsense, there are a number of highly refined trees out there with their native natural foliage on, true, relative to the amount collected they don't number in their hundreds but it certainly is possible. As a species, sabina is not worthless, we are simply playing a numbers game, the chances of striking it lucky finding great foliage on a great trunk. A level of understanding is required here that the sabinas from Italy are different from the ones from Spain. The ones in Spain are different depending on where they were collected and even there, two trees next to each other on a mountain have different characteristics, exactly the same as Itoigawa Junipers did up on the mountains.

What do we do then with the trees that have poor foliage? Burn them? Give up on them? Go around saying all sabinas are rubbish because that one is? All swans were white until someone saw a black one.

What to do then? Many people will say "graft Itoigawa!" as if it is the great panacea to every single problem...it's the bonsai version of "put a bird on it". Absolutely there are situations where grafting Itoigawa onto Sabina or phoenicia is a good idea, particularly on poor foliaged small trunked trees destined to become shohin. This is following the fundamental concept of designing bonsai, making the most out of the material in front of you, even if this takes five years longer.

A problem will occur however if we take the same approach across the board for every tree regardless of foliage type as we will end up with a homogenous bonsai world which lacks interest and variation. It will soon get boring with even less breadth of species that is possible to use for bonsai, anyone for sumac, thyme and camelia? It is my suggestion that the "Itoigawa" of Sabinas is found, the "Itoigawa" of Rocky Mountains is found and this is used respectively where poor foliage is holding a fantastic trunk back. Grafting the best genetic variant of the natural foliage onto trunks of the same species. I know there are some people out there who feel the same and are actively doing this because we have discussed it.

[I will just point out that this is in no way a criticism of the recent bonsai focus article featuring Enrico Savini...that was great work over a long time, part of the ongoing western bonsai experiment and I look forward to seeing it in the flesh. It is a comment of the negativity towards collected trees across parts of the western bonsai world and a complete misunderstanding of how to work them successfully]

The other thing this has implications towards is anybody who works a yamadori juniper in the same way as a container grown chinensis deserves everything that results. Excessive pruning of branches down to two per node at the initial styling on species such as Sabina and RMJ will result in a severely weakened tree, the majority of the times fataly so. This should be avoided at all costs. This is a fundamental and basic concept. If anyone has any experience to the opposite I would be glad to see it, but having seen plenty of seriously sketchy looking Sabinas and RMJ's where the crotches have been cleaned out, the multibranch nodes have been thinned down to two and the foliage plucked to an inch of the tip, I won't hold my breath, especially when compared to a considerable number of Sabinas in Spain, Poland, London and elsewhere, RMJ in Portland, Tampa and elsewhere...all which have a full head of hair and are steaming towards the goal of a manageable and solid fundamental branching structure which will improve over time.

Either we learn from the process that other bonsai cultures have been through or we invent a new style...lets say we call it the shaggy sabina style and convince ourselves that it looks awesome and how we meant it all along...I think I might patent that. The SSS, along with the sub division of the SSS, the Leggy Sabina Division or LSD...I think I'm onto something here. Again, I digress...ultimately this issue comes about from the same fundamental problem that the majority of the human race suffers from...the lack of an open mind and the ability to evaluate that which is in front of their eyes rather than fall into the trap of a preconceived or learned response. Education, experience and conscious thought allow us to consider how and why something has come to be. When you think about how much effort has gone into making a masterpiece bonsai, do you seriously think there is an easier road? Akiyama's first prime minister award winner was over twenty five years in the making from collection to show. Some collected trees will go from mountain to exhibition within five years, others will require a longer process, perhaps involving a change of wardrobe. We are atill very much in the infancy of this process and starting out on the path, there is plenty of experimenting to be done. It is a difficult challenge but bonsai is not supposed to be fun and enjoyable...we should look to do things that can't be done. Grow Rosemary bonsai in the UK? Preposterous. Get a Sabina to compact? Ridiculous. Turn a RMJ into a masterpiece...can't be done. Get over it. It can, will and has been done.


A well styled western juniper by Michael Fedducia. Note the foliage mass and comdition of those tips that remains on the tree. In a few years time this tree will have half as many primary branches but five times the foliage density and a very similar overall appearance...go figure how that happens?

A Juniperus Thurifera by Yannick Kiggen from this years Noelanders. Pimp ass antique kodei pot...not that many people noticed. Flowering but still compact.

Another of the boy Yannick's Junipers, this time a common Juniper. I have heard it said that Common Junipers wont make good bonsai, they all die. Apparently this tree didnt get that memo.

Anyway. Point is...was there a point to this other than killing time in a wifi free hotel at two am? Oh yeah. Junipers...they might have the same name, the same overall look, but just like me and every other Yorkshireman relative to Londoners, we might all be Englishmen, but we are all very different. On that regionalist bombshell...onwards and upwards.
 

 

Thursday 3 April 2014

Amazon

If you are going to buy my book through the tax dodgers of Amazon where it is up for pre-order, the please do it through these links. I will earn about thruppence ha'ppeny per copy but I don't earn anything from the publishers on royalties. I am waiting to hear if I can buy them wholesale but knowing how Amazon can buy and then sell retail at less than average wholesale price, not pay any tax and then I get a bill from Her Majesty asking for more cash so I can't see me bothering. This is what is wrong with the world...anyway, if you are going to buy it....

UK

US

Personally I would wait myself...and in the mean time you could listen to this tune that entertained me tonight...

Keep on keeping on people

I can feel Satan clasping his hands around my soul as I sell it for a nickel and a dime...perhaps this is more appropriate...

 

A genuine treatise on fertilising.

I would hope that by the end of the last post you realised that it was actually a bit of an April Fools inspired post. There is no benefit to placing your fertiliser on your trees in a clockwise fashion from the back, under a full moon with underpants on your head. Glad to see some people came up with some suitable suggestions though. In actual fact putting dead fish on your trees is a great fertiliser, but very smelly.

There is a lot of nonsense out there about fertilising trees and not a lot of application of common sense. There is no one size fits all method, scheme or single product that does everything. What is suitable for John A in his garden with his soil is not suitable for John B in his (There are a lot of Johns in bonsai if you didn't realise). Regular clients should now be used to my seemingly random instructions of fertilise this half strength after the leaves harden and then stop for the summer and then full strength in the autumn but give seaweed extract on regular intervals. Despite this seeming incredibly complex, it is actually just the application of a few basic ideas.

As you can imagine from the April fools parody, I am a firm believer in keeping it simple. All successful bonsai nurseries do and I aspire to be successful. I use only three products on a regular basis and there is no need for anything else. The comment yesterday about using only organic was a very valid point. (Biogold, maxicrop seaweed extract and another similar seaweed extract with extra iron in it if things look yellow)

The importance of micro organisms and bacteria cannot be stated enough. Without them your bonsai is growing in a sterile environment, and using some of the modern substrate mixes we do in bonsai, this is especially true. How can we encourage an eco system in the soil that creates a healthy root system and subsequently a healthy tree? Steer clear of cheap chemical fertilisers...or for that matter expensive chemical fertilisers. There is plenty of information about the benefits of organic over chemical out there and so I need not go into too much depth.

In terms of fertilising more is definitely not better, especially not if using anything chemical. Balance is key. I was reading some stuff and I came across this incredibly obvious law, but until I read it, it didnt occur to me...Leibig's Law of the minimum

Yield is proportional to the amount of the most limiting nutrient, whichever nutrient it may be.

This means that if the soils is deficient in Magnesium, then it doesn't matter how much Iron you pump into the soil, the growth is limited to the Magnesium deficiency.

Like I said, it was so outstandingly obvious after the fact but it changed my thinking. That is why we read books I guess. There is a lot of in depth science that is interesting if you like that sort of thing. But if, like 99% of the Japanese bonsai masters it doesn't matter as long as it works, the follow some simple guidelines and success is more likely.

  1. Use a good quality solid organic fertiliser. Ideally solid cakes or pellets are best, powder tends to create an hard crust on the surface very quickly.
  2. Supplement with a good quality seaweed extract to provide micro nutrients
  3. Apply according to requirements and only when average air temperature is between 12 and 34 degrees Celcius.

The difficulty is in finding 1 and 2 and then figuring out 3. Even in Japan there is great difficulty in finding a good fertiliser. I spent a good hour talking with Akiyama-san recently about how modern abura-kasu (oil seed cakes) were useless because they squeeze all the nutrients out during the pressing and so the stuff that remains is ineffective as fertiliser. Even the gold standard of bonsai fertiliser, Bio Gold, can be patchy depending on when it was made and how much it got mixed up. One of the problems with organic fertilisers is the uneven distribution of nutrients.

Seaweed extract is used not to promote growth and increase extension, but consider it the bonsai equivalent of taking a vitamin supplement. Strength, resistance to disease and improved colour are all benefits. Everyone who uses it claims that the colour and the health of their trees improves.

Number 3...apply according to requirements. As long as the pH of the water and soil is fairly neutral and balanced organic fertiliser is applied then nutrient deficiency will not be a problem. Only once the pH starts to move towards one end or the other then nutrient deficiency starts to happen. The uptake of nutrients depends on pH as shown here...and here in technicolour...

Iron deficiency in plants is often not caused by an absence of iron in the soil, but a pH that inhibits uptake of iron...so it doesnt matter how much iron you add to the soil, like me at a cheese board, it won't be able to eat it. Reduce the pH and it will solve the problem.

So following on the line of thought...how does the pH of soil get out of whack? Excessive chemical fertilisers and water impurity. Some European growers have such hard water that they need to resort to using reverse osmosis to lower the pH.

So getting back to the requirements...ask yourself the question...what do I want the tree to do? Do I actually want my tree to grow? For some bonsai, the answer is "No, I don't actually want my tree to extend or thicken."...for others it is "Yes, I want the trunk thickness to triple in a year". How to achieve these objectives is not just simply down to how much fertiliser is applied as remember more is not always better. Allowing unchecked growth assisted by fertiliser is the way. For builidng delicate ramification, pinching out the terminal shoots assisted by a complete lack of fertiliser is the way forward. Pushing growth with one hand and stoping it with the other is the way round and round in circles.

Work out the balance between : What does the tree need to stay healthy and balanced all over versus What do I want to the tree to do

Why is the temperature so important? Lower than 12 degrees and the bacteria that breaks down the fertiliser into easily absorbed compounds are yet to become active. Above 34 and bacterial activity will cause the soil temperature will rise to dangerous levels, killing both the roots and also the bacteria in the soil

I appear to have taken a very simple concept and made it incredibly complicated. maybe I should have just left it as an April Fool...That'll learn me.

 

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Muck Spreading...

One of the things that spring requires us to consider is the fertilising of our trees. One of the most important jobs for us to do in terms of both styling and the health of the tree. We must consider many things when doing so, not only the species, but the age, stage of development and objectives for the year.

On my travels around the bonsai-sphere I hear so many tales of this super wonder fertiiser that works amazingly and all these complicated feeding regimes with a little bit of foliar feed on tuesday and then low nitrogen in any month ending in -ber... Most of this is just simply a load of nonsense to make us feel like we are in control when actually the one size scatter gun approach is completely out of control. So as this is the season, here are a few tips to help with spreading the proverbial...

Use only organic fertilisers. Healthy trees need a healthy soil biology that will be promoted by organic fertilisers and destroyed by aggressive chemical feeding.

Consider the stage of development for your trees, not all maples need fertilising early on in the season. Ramified trees will soon get out of shape if you push them with your super grow formula. That is just common sense...

Always place your fertiliser cakes on the pot starting at the back, working in a clockwise manner. This is absolutely essential unless you are left handed when it is permitted, but not advised, to go anti clockwise.

Flowering trees will often be very tired after the blossoms have finished. I always find that giving them a cup of compost tea and some cakes afterwards tends to help get over the shock.

Liquid fertiliser is best applied in the morning, unless it was applied the night before in which case either will be suitable. As long as it was done on the correct day.

Junipers and azaleas prefer their fertiliser cut up into smaller pieces for easier digestion as they have fine roots. It is also better to give them solids only after weaning them off a liquid diet early in their development.

Unfortunately I missed the best opportunity to fertilise my trees earlier in the month and must now wait for April 15th and the next full moon for maximum efficiency of fertiiser uptake. If the correct cycle is observed, then there will be an estimated efficiency improvement of approximately 43.2%*

For maximum spreading efficiency however...

*Actual results may vary, no responsibility is taken for the accuracy of the information provided here.