The Bonsai Blog of Peter Chan

They say that in England we have weather rather than climate. The weather changes from day to day – one day it could be pouring with rain and the next it could be bright blue skies.

It is December now – autumn is over and the trees are going dormant. Most of our bonsai are still out on the benches, but this is the time when we start working on the real trees that are growing in our fields.

I have always loved deciduous trees. The Japanese maples are my favourite, but the native European deciduous species such as the Beech, Hornbeam, Hawthorn and Field Maple are also wonderful. We make a lot of bonsai from these species. The only trouble with the decidous species is that they are seldom – if ever used for demonstrtions at Conventions and talks because you cannot easily transform one in the same way that you would do a Pine or Juniper. There isn’t the instant or Wow effect for an one hour demo.

Deciduous subjects take time. It requires time to develop a thick trunk, time to create and develop a taper and even more time to develop ramification.

What I will show you here is how we go about creating our Hornbeam bonsai.

These Hornbeams were planted here in 1995 as two year old seedlings. In just twelve years they have grown 15-20ft tall, despite repeated chopping of the leaders every other year. Most of these trees have 4-8″ diameter trunks.

Here we are just cutting them down to size. 90% of the tree is discarded leaving just the stump to regrow. In another month we will be digging them up with a bulldozer/excavator so that we can reduce the rootball to a manageable size. They are replanted in the ground to grow for another year. After that, they are dug up again and potted up into large containers.

Not all the trees grow uniformly. In this batch of trees there are some with 8″ in diameter trunks, others are barely 2″ in dia – and they are all the same age! Hornbeams have beautiful fluted trunks. Taper is easy to develop. In just three or four years we can produce a complete bonsai from these stumps.

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AIR-LAYERING HORNBEAMS

In May this year, I came across a Hornbeam that had been dug up two years ago. It had developed good ramification and a good taper, but I felt it was much too tall. So I decided to air-layer it in order to make a shorter bonsai.

So we air-layered the top as shown here.

Nice taper and branches developed in just two years from a bare stump.

Hornbeams air-layer very easily. This one rooted in just two months and look at the size of the trunk – over 5″ in diameter.

It was immediately potted up and we now have a lovely bonsai with good nebari, nice taper and excellent ramification.