By this time of year my indoor trees always look a bit tired. I am deeply envious of a grower like
Jerry Mieslik, who has a big, beautifully set up grow room with lights and
plumbing. Google photos-you will see that his trees look wonderful. Mine sure don’t . They are just treading
water, waiting for better times outdoors.
I am writing this on April 7th, and there is a substantial
dusting of snow on the ground. Substantial means the grass doesn’t show
through. Forecast is for night time
temperatures to be below freezing for the rest of the week. It may be Spring on
the calendar, but in practical fact it hasn’t shown up yet. The majority of my
collection is still packed away. This really is the latest I have ever taken things out of winter
storage, but I’m feeling lazy, and the plants know what they want. Even the
early riser like the quince, crab apples and Ume are only now just popping discreet
buds.
When I say things are packed away, I mean the ‘good’ stuff in real
pots. This material gets the best location, fully sheltered from any sun light,
so takes its time awakening. Because I’m
running out of room, the rough stock and recent cuttings are in another part of
the back yard that gets more sun. As far as plants go, it’s a whole nother
world, and they wake up earlier. On the days it’s not freezing, I ‘ve been
sorting through this material and getting it into new pots. Training has to be constant
and ongoing or you get no results.
I am probably over cautious with
this newly work stuff, so it comes into the garage when temps will be below
freezing overnight. My kids are now teen
agers and off living a glamourous life
of their own now, but when they were younger were usually around to help with
the Bonsai Shuffle. This year I’m doing it myself. This means that I don’t have
to hear one of them snarl “why do you have so many plants?” or the worse example” Why do you NEED so many
plants?”
Many of us let our collection grow past the point of practicality. What we need and what is easy to manage often
are two different things. But it’s not a bad thing to consider the size of our collection
now and again. I often advise new growers to get more than one bonsai-it helps
spread out the ‘love’ and may mean one solitary bonsai doesn’t get killed with
kindness. But the other end of the spectrum is worth avoiding too. Having so
many trees they cant be properly taken care of is a circumstance to avoid. Far
better to have a moderate of bonsai that get proper attention and can be kept styled,
rather than a backyard full of un-attended junk.
And that is just a consideration
of number of trees. What about stock
that, for whatever reason, isn’t now a good bonsai and may never be one? The well-known
bonsai author Colin Lewis is a big advocate of ruthless culling of a bonsai
collection, thinking that bonsai take so much time, especially to get them to a
high level, that ‘wasting’ time on inferior stock that will never go anywhere
is not the best use of resources. That’s a tough line to take. Most of use have
a few-or more than a few- items that we
tuck in the back and hope of a bolt of inspiration to hit us. Myself, I tend to
think the statement “Some trees will just never make good bonsai” is usually
false. Most trees will make a bonsai, if given enough time, effort and
inspiration. It’s just a matter of can you provide all three?
By this time of year my indoor trees always look a bit tired. I am deeply envious of a grower like
Jerry Mieslik, who has a big, beautifully set up grow room with lights and
plumbing. Google photos-you will see that his trees look wonderful. Mine sure don’t . They are just treading
water, waiting for better times outdoors.
How different it would be with a greenhouse! I have written in these
pages, previously, about my appreciation for the detective stories that feature
Nero Wolfe. Wolfe lived in a New York
brownstone, and atop the brownstone was a three zone greenhouse to house his collection
of ten thousand orchids. Wouldn’t it be fabulous to have such a facility as
your own?
But perhaps Wolfe’s set up might prove a bit confining? Why limit yourself? The great English
plantsman and garden designer Joseph
Paxton created a massive green house for his employer the Duke of Devonshire
that was 270 feet long by 120 feet wide. To give you a sense of just how large
that is, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert came to take a tour, they drove
from end to end in a carriage. The massive structure could hold full size trees
in tropical comfort and stood for more than 70 years, until a lack of coal and
manpower brought about by the First World War made it impossible to keep up.
If the Duke’s greenhouse still wouldn’t
give you enough room, Paxton’s magnum opus was an iron and glass building of
prodigious size, large enough to hold a whole world’s worth of innovation and
invention. The Great Exhibition held in Britain in 1851 was a celebration of
all the things human endeavor could accomplish, and this world’s fair of
technology and culture was held in a magnificent structure called the Crystal
Palace. More than 1800 feet long and containing nearly a million square feet of
space under it’s glass roof, the Palace was nearly 130 feet tall at it’s
tallest point. Paxton actually raised the height so that several elm trees
growing on the sight would not have to be cut down.
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