2 week trip to Japan at Shunka-en Part2

Beautiful pine in the middle of Kobayashi's private collection


A beautiful hollow ume.


Taxus


One of Oyakata's famous Junipers


This is a fieldgrown Black pine.
Not the best material , not so old bark , a major wound.

The thing is Yamadori material has the hardest wood (deadwood)
And material grown in pot have harder wood than fieldgrown.
Cause they grow slower.




Fukita-san worked on this tree and told about that the flow of this tree is to the right.
He also likes the good thickness of the first right branch.
So in future he will reduce or remove the first left branch and grown the first right branch a little more and get a little more thickness to follow the flow of the tree.

2 week trip to Japan at Shunka-en

It has been a month or so since i posted.

Cause i really had the most enjoyable month in my life till now.

Thanks to Peter Warren a dream came true.

I had the oppertunity to stay and work 2 weeks at Kunio kobayashi's place.
I really enjoyed it over there and miss it.

Allso the kindness of the Japanese people it wonderfull.


It started the day i was leaving by flight to Tokyo.

At the airport an older Japanese women was sitting next to me, she asked me why i was alone waiting for the flight to Japan.
So i said my story with a big smile on my face , that i was heading of to Shunka-en.
She gave me her adress and said that if i ever had any problems in Japan from what kind ever i always was welcome at her house.

after a few hours waiting i sat in the aircraft.
And a japanese couple next to me started talking with me, their english wasn't that good so it got a conversation by writing.
They just gave me 1000 yen for my taxi to Shunka-en, i said i couldn't accept it and they kept insisting that I had to keep.

After an 12 hours flight with great conversations and thinking wow these people are friendly and hospital. i finally arrived at Narita Airport.
I got the KEISEI bus to ICHINOE station to take a taxi to Shunka-en.

Finally arrived and got a warm welcome by Kobayashi-san's wife, Valentine Brose ,Fukita-san(the oldest apprentice of Kobayashi-san) ,Jin(apprentice for 3 months) and Tanabe (apprentice for 3 weeks).

Peter Warren, Akiyama-san and Kobayashi-san were setting things up for the Kokufu market at green club.

So first i could look at the trees, antique pots and displaytables, museum and apprentice house.
And than the work could start.
I started by needle plucking, wiring and shaping a black pine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

When i left Amsterdam Shiphol airport :D




When i arrived above Japan
Beautiful mountains with a ricefield in the middle of nowhere.
And Mount fuji in distance.







The costumer part of Kobayashi's garden.



A satsuki covered in bandage , this is to prevent the sun can't damage/burn the trunk.




A great looking trident.



Beautiful ume with great deadwood.




Kobayashi's garden with new pond (Peter helped with the digging last year :D )






One of many satsuki's



A beautiful ume



A nice old Pine with great bark.
Important for a Black or red pine is old bark.




A beautiful Chojubai on rock.
It was among one of mine favourites.



One of Oyakata's most famous bonsai.




This is how a traditional Bonsai studio looks like.
Every summer the ground gets mixed with water and salt to make a harder surface.
But if anything would fall it's still soft that it will not break.

Fukita-san (Kobayashi's first apprentice at work)



The black pine i could work on.
First we had to balance the energy of the tree by plucking needles.
This is for black that are healthy.
Strong(the top) shoots got 3 needles left.
Average(middle) shoots 5 needles
And small(lower) shoots 7 needles.



Probably one of the only picture you will see me working on



And the tree after plucking , wiring and shaping.
We used a guywire to get the second left branch closer to the trunk.




Here is a picture from above.
The top was styled flatter and with less green, much air and light woukld get in and in futute more buds will come to cover the top up.




Oyakata told me the first left branch was grafted on 4 years ago from a bigger branch from the right side.

First they grafted a other pine on the branch.
they cut the branch off and drilled a whole in the trunk and put the branch in, cambium healed and in time the grafted pine could be removed.

Thursday 8 March 2012 Will Baddeley deadwood carving workshop

Yama-Bonsai studio presents Will Baddeley deadwood workshop

When? Thursday 8 March 2012
Where? Belgium

For more info contact me at yannick_bonsai@msn.com or 0032(0)499345498

Yama-Bonsai studio presenteerd een doodhout frezen workshop met Will Baddeley

Wanneer?Donderdag 8 maart 2012
Waar?Hamont-Achel Belgie

Voor meer info neem contact op via yannick_bonsai@msn.com of 0032(0)499345498

Noelanders trophy

Last weekend it was Noelanders trophy,One of the best shows in Europe.
It is a weekend with quality trees , selling stands , meeting friends and lots of fun.

The quality of the trees got much better than last year,
With a juniper chinensis styled by Kimura and owned by Luis vallejo that got first prize ,Mauro's juniper chinensis itoigawa that got first prize of the kifu size and other nominated trees like simon temblett's salix( grown from cutting and styled by him , he even made the pot.) And also got the Bonsai Clubs International President's Award of Excellence.

And not to forget the great demo's of Ryan Neil , Bill Valavanis , Jorge Campos, Mauro Stemberger and Vaclav Novac.

I must say Ryan Neil really has great talent for styling Bonsai and his way of explaining and teaching made the demo very interesting.

Many thanks to Bonsai association Belgium for this great exhibition.

And last but not least many thanks to Peter warren , John Armitage and Peter snart for making this weekend worthwhile for me.You guys show what Bonsai is about.

unfortunately i didn't make pictures of this event.
But i'll ask some to post here.

First work of 2012

Here is a Sylvestris pine i collected in 2010 in the South of France.

The trees growed really good so it was time to work on them.

Here is the tree in 2010 just potted.




First we cleaned the tree and made deadwood of the stumps.
The first branch was cut off because the foliage was to far away and we couldn't use it in the design i wanted.
So made a jin out of it.

Much foliage was to far away so in june i need to do mekiri on this tree(this is a technique to get backbudding,In some time i will show you how to do this).

after we looked for options and we lifted the tree to the front and to the right,to get an interesting movement out of it.

This is the result.

Monday i worked on my cascade sylvestris.
Cleaning out the old needles.
Put the tree in wire and this is the result.

The tree needs to fill up and grow in some places.

He has still a long way to go.

Pinus mugo

Here are some pictures of my student Patrick's Mugo Pine I styled.

He has some doubts about which way to go with this tree.
Maybe you could set his mind :D

Here is a picture of the tree as he purchased it.



Here is the trees first styling in 2010.


Patrick wasn't happy with this styling, so he came to me and we looked how we could take this tree to a level higher.
We changed the angle so we could see beautiful movement but still this beautiful movement was hidden beacause of the foliage.
So we bend the top down with a guywire.

What do you think?
Ofcourse this tree still needs to mature in future.
Sometimes it's good to wait and cut a branch till you know for sure.

The crown looks a bit heavy on the picture.In real life this isn't









I like this idea , the tree is in harmony and balance.