Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You know, I think I'm less okay with someone just going to the grocery store buying pomegranates and just like gluing them on their tree than I am. Like, if, if, if you did have some that fell off the tree and you put them back, that, that feels more right. But I don't know, it's a gray, It's a gray area. It's, it's, it's not as bad as one of the other Phoenix graph type things, but it feels like it's in that camp, you know?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Oh, man, I just got this vision of like, you're. I'm displaying my pomegranate at the Expo and then someone's like, oh, just run to Vons really quick. Or Albertsons. And I don't know if you guys have those. Run to Whole Foods and grab a couple of pomegranates to throw on there.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yeah, like. Yeah, like that. That feels like it's cheating. Like the baby trees.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: The Black Pondo podc.
The Black Pondo podcast. I'm, I'm really good with whatever, but I'm trying to make it very informal, free flowing and fun. So.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Cool. That all sounds great.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, let's stick with deciduous since that's my comfort zone, but.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Oh, for sure, for sure.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Within that context, we're good. You start drilling me on pine questions, I might get a little rested, but.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: That would be, that would be hilarious if I did that. I'm like, okay, we're only talking conifer today.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: How was the gym, man?
[00:01:40] Speaker A: It was good. All the freaking resolutioners are starting to show up. So January rough there, but that was good. Had to work off all the Christmas. Christmas fun that we had yesterday, but.
Yeah, that's great. Or do you work out at home?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: I do, I do both, so. So I'm really into jiu jitsu. Been doing that since about 2018, and that really gives me drive to want to get in shape. And so I have, I just have a Planet Fitness membership, which there's a lot of things about Planet Fitness that I absolutely hate. I like that they're just everywhere, you know, so that's nice.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I travel a lot for work and it's great to just be able to go there and I think it's like, so inexpensive. But then I also have a home gym.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Nice.
Yeah, I, I use 24, which I'm sure is very similar, but for travel it kind of sucks because there's, there's a lot of 24 hour on the west coast. It's not, not too much on, on all of my routes, so I might, I might need to switch it up.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, I travel a lot as well and there's, there's Planet Fitness everywhere now. They are all over the place. Not, not. They're not, they're not all created equal. Like, some of them are really nice and clean and then some of them are kind of janky and old.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: But, but it gets the job done for me, so I'm, I'm okay with it.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Good.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: But yeah, Andrew, you're looking lean, man. You're looking good. That's. It's awesome to see. I think health is so important. Health is wealth. I always say it is.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been focused a lot on that this year, so that's been fun to see some results, see some progress.
So, yeah, it's like my daily meditation. Go to the gym in the morning, work out for a couple hours. That's like my, if I don't do that, then the rest of my day is just kind of thrown off. So.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fantastic.
What, what kind of working out do you do?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: I'm mostly doing strength training or resistance training, so mostly, mostly with weights. I'll do cardio on my rest days, but it's, it's mostly just trying to build some muscle, lose some fat. And I've done a lot of different things over the years and that's been like the, this is like the one thing that seems to be working the best for that. Plus I've like radically changed my diet too, so that, that's been helping. Basically eating meat and vegetables and fruit. Nothing out of a box or a can or a bottle.
Love it. Yeah, those two things have, like, radically sped up the process.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, I think. Well, first off, for me personally, I know, like, I, I was really into running for a long time, but I, I didn't really start losing a lot of body weight until I started lifting weights, which is kind of counterintuitive, but that's kind of how it works for me.
And then so much of it is diet. Like, you know, if you, if you eat really clean, you're just going to start losing body fat, which is great. So.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found, like, I, I resisted doing weight stuff for, like, years and I've. I just kind of picked it up really hardcore in the last, like six months. And that's, that's when I was like, oh, crap, this is working really, really well.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: That's all. That's Fantastic.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: You're looking good, man. Looking good, looking lean. Thank you.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Right back at you.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Thanks. Thank you.
Yeah, well, so I guess, you know, like, I, I'm a big fan of the, everything that you've been doing. You've been doing a fantastic job with the YouTube channel, your Instagram, Bonsai Wire, everything that you do. I've been following along. So I kind of have like a bunch of follow up questions that I'm curious about.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: But then. Awesome. But then I was also kind of just wanting to talk to you about what the future of Rakuyo Bonsai looks like. If you have plans for next year, that kind of thing.
Maybe could we jump into those things first or.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. Holidays are on, New Year's coming up fast, so. Yeah, let's talk about that.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. Awesome. Well, yeah, I guess for now's a great time to kind of reflect on things, reflect on the year and determine what you want to do differently. And I was curious, what does 2025 look like for, for you? I guess, like personally and professionally.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
Slimming down both, both as we talked about earlier, myself personally, but also on, on the trees. I've, I've, you know, I, I, my garden is about a quarter acre, which isn't huge, but for not having any staff and just being me, it's like, it feels pretty huge. And so with a quarter acre, it was great the first few years because I could fill it with all of these stumps that I had and keep on top of things pretty well. But now all those stumps have a lot more branches than they used to.
And so they're not just taking up more space, but they're. The garden's getting, you know, exponentially that I'm getting more and more branches, which just means more and more work. And so slimming down the collection to kind of, kind of fit, to kind of stay within my workload has been a focus of mine. So I sold, you know, 20 trees at the expo. Sold about 10 or 15 trees kind of, you know, privately here. So it's trying to get the garden kind of a little bit more manageable still. I want it to be full. I'm not like getting down to 10 trees, but trying to get it a little bit more manageable.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Nice. What does the selection criteria look like? How do you determine which trees you're getting rid of?
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Yeah, quality and variety are my two big things and kind of passion as well. So quality wise, I'm more likely to part with the things that are a lower quality than higher quality, I think everybody's like that and they're downsizing phase and then also variety. So it's like, if this is the only oak that I have, I'm probably not going to sell it versus if I have 30 Japanese maples. Okay, maybe I can shave off a few of those. And then passion. There's, there's just some species that I've, you know, early on I felt like I had to have everything because I was teaching everything. And now that I have several years under my belt, it's like, okay, I really don't like crape myrtle. Maybe I don't need a crape myrtle.
I learned a lot about it by having it and I can work on it in all my students collections, but I don't need to have one myself. It's just not for me. So those three things have kind of guided my kind of downsizing process.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Is crepe myrtle one that you don't actually like or did you just throw that out there as an example?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: I don't actually like it.
It's probably just a bias from the, all the badly pruned ones that I see in Texas. It's like the tree that you see in Texas that's just kind of butchered. And so there's probably a little bit of that. But it just as a, you know, if I was living down south and that was the only deciduous tree I could have, I'd probably have a few of them. But I don't know, just, just I, I, I, I, I find that I'm, I'm more drawn to trees that live in colder climates. I like the toughness that those trees have and the sustainability in the branches for sure.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Makes total sense.
Yeah, I guess grape myrtle is an interesting one. Like you kind of have to either go for nice ramification or the flowers. Right. Like you can't really have both. Is that, is that what you found or.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yeah, just like a pomegranate, they'll flower on the tip of the extension. And so if you want flowers, you really have to let them run. And, and so like showing a crepe myrtle and having flowers is not really conducive. You can have it in your garden, especially if you're, you know, thickening some branches and you let it bust out. But, but yeah, it's, it's not great. Kind of for that reason. I do think once the trees mature and all of the growth is not like 12 inches long, but like 3 inches long, I think that would Be a lot more proportional, but it'd take a pretty refined tree to kind of get there. But, you know, it's, it is a beautiful. I like the bark on the tree a lot. You know, I would love to see people in the south, which I don't see, but I would love to see people treat them like stewardias. Just kind of graceful, elegant trees. Not massive trunks. I had one that was just a big volcano and it was like a cool, impressive tree with a lot of presence. And I still really like that tree. It's just, it's just not something I'm, you know, super passionate for.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Does crape myrtle not do well where you live? Like, horticulturally it does great.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: It doesn't do as well as Texas. You know, I had a client down there who had one from the same batch that I had and these huge, you know, massive field grown trunks.
And he probably. It was the like one of the very, very, very few trees that outgrew Portland. And anything that like just loves the heat is going to do better outside of Portland than here in Portland. I mean, for Japanese maples and just any like tree that you'll see in a Kokofu book, you know, I haven't seen faster growth than my, my zip code. But if, if it's like a ficus or any of the trees that like tolerate and kind of thrive in that kind of heat, they'll do better elsewhere. So one of the few species that actually grew faster down there.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Makes sense. Makes sense. Any other species that maybe you started appreciating and that appreciation has dwindled a bit.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Oh gosh. Species that is dwindling. You know, there's a lot of native species that, you know, I'll play with it for a few years and then it gets less interesting as like alder is one. Like I used to, you know, we have a lot of alders here in the Pacific Northwest. I would collect a few and I think they make fine bonsai. But there's, there's not like one thing that's like special about it. Like, yeah, I'll make a nice deciduous silhouette, you know, fractal pattern, whatever. But other than that, there's not like one thing that makes it really special like that it doesn't get fall color. Like the leaves just turn from like green to brown and fall off.
And it's, it develops well enough, but then the leaves get fungus from all the local trees. So it's, it's one that I thought would be, you know, you can develop it pretty fast, but it's just not a.
Not something that I'm, you know, dying to have more of in the garden.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Makes sense. Makes sense. Nice. Any.
Any professional goals that you have in 2025 or anything that you'd like to accomplish?
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, professional goals. Let's see. Other than less trees, I'm driving out to the national show, so that's going to be a fun trip.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Wow. Dang. Okay.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: How far is that?
How many days or hours?
[00:13:27] Speaker A: It's probably. If I'm being smart, it's probably four days, but three days if I'm pushing it.
So that should be fun. You know, I. I'm not sure how many more national shows there's going to be. You know, Bill's getting older, and so I kind of want to just drive out and support that, and he's really supportive of our expo here on the west coast, so kind of want to return the favor that way.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Shout out to Bill. Yeah, he's a madman.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he's. He's. He's like the most hardcore bonsai person of us all. He's.
Yeah, yeah, he's. He's impressive driving out.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: So he's drove out. Sorry to interrupt you. He's drove out twice now, right? To the Pacific Bonsai Expo.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So he's. He's like a champ.
So. Yeah, I want to kind of just. You know, I've never had a tree in the national show. I've been to almost every national show. Last year I couldn't go because I had some. Some conflict, but I've been to almost every national show and, you know, I. I haven't ever had a tree in one, so I was like, okay, I'm starting to. Some of my trees are starting to get some branches now. So I'm like, okay, it's. It's time.
So that should be fun. Let's see what else is going on in 2025. Excited in a couple weeks here to go to Gafu 10 for the 50th anniversary. So kicking off 2025 with a Japan trip which will be special.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Gafu. Gafuten. Is that the Shohin show?
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I forget. Yeah, it's this. It's. It's probably the best show in Japan after Kokofu. It's the top Shohin exhibition and they're having their 50th anniversary this year. So super excited to kind of see that. I think Daisaku is telling me it's going to. There's going to be some special trees there for the show to celebrate the Anniversary, so. And then a year later, just about in 2026, is the 100th anniversary of Kokofu. So plan. Planning to go to that, too. So lots of Japan trips in the future.
Yeah, I just. I want to kind of slim down the garden a little bit. My garden's still super young. It's four years from being a big dirt pile, so it's still super fresh. All the landscaping I've done is still little baby plants, so I want to continue kind of evolving the garden and that way, refining the trees that are in the collection. Just kind of making the garden nicer over time. So kind of incremental improvements there.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. I'm. Same way. I think I didn't realize how much building a garden is like building a bonsai tree. And it's just like incremental steps. The whole kaizen kind of thing.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of fun to see it evolve over time. And it's like. I don't know if you've had this experience, but, like, you think you have it all planned out in your head, like, year one and then, like, year two comes around, and then everything changes. And every year it's just this constant kind of evolution.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So that's kind of. It's fun to put through.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah. On that vein, is there anything in your garden? I know that I have found a few things that I am not happy with that. The way that I built my bonsai garden. Just certain things.
Anything that you wish you would have or you would have done differently, being able to. And I'm. I'm just throwing all these questions out.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: On the spot, but, yeah, I would have definitely run power and water further into the garden. I. I guess I can still do that. It's not that hard, but it would have been easier before all the gravel and benches and everything was there.
And I. I wouldn't have done this differently, but I'm. I want to rebuild my greenhouse sometime in the future. Right now, it just looks like typical, you know, nursery kind of greenhouse, and I kind of want to make it look nice in the future. That's probably not for the next five years, but just something on my radar. That's something I feel like I can step up and improve on.
Other than that, I'm pretty fortunate on how the garden was laid out and everything. I'm not too upset about any of that. I did really take my time to build it and piece through it. And so it's.
It's been fun to kind of see it evolve and Change that way.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Very cool. Any thoughts on what that greenhouse might look like in the future?
[00:17:56] Speaker A: You know, I guess the simple way of saying it is right now it looks cheap, and I want it to look expensive. I'm not going to pay a lot of money.
I'll probably be building it all myself, but, you know, like, less plastic, more wood.
I'm not going to get too crazy, but just, just right now it just looks like very much DIY like greenhouse that you're going to see anywhere in the. Or, you know, here in the Oregon Valley or Laymouth Valley. And I want it to look just kind of more intentional, for sure. Not sure what. That looks fantastic, but yeah, we'll see.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Cool.
And then I guess I'm curious, the next, like, let's say 20 years, what does Rakuyo and look like? Or any thoughts or ideas and.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, next 20 years, Rakuyo will kind of. Right now I have a lot of trees still, as we talked about, and I'm happy with that.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: How many do you have?
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Probably 120 what I would call, like significant bonsai, like something like future expo trees.
And then on top of that, maybe another 20 or 30 kind of projects in development, probably another 30 shohin. I have 200 Japanese beech, kind of pre bonsai waiting to get potted up. So I have a. I have too many trees. But, you know, I think 20 years from now, what the garden will look like, obviously. I think that just the garden itself will have a lot more patina, which I'll enjoy kind of seeing that naturally develop. But I do want to downsize the trees to more of a museum type of feeling. So probably ending somewhere between 30 and 40 trees of just, you know, instead of having 20, you know, great Japanese maples, having like two or three just baller ones, you know, having two or three just baller beach.
So I know that's going to be a hard process to get. Get to, but that is kind of the ultimate goal is to have. Have Rakuyo. You know, when I'm getting older and my back is getting weaker, have it be more like Louis Vallejo's museum in Spain.
That type of feeling.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: That's a. That's a good, good goal right there. Love his. His museum. It is absolutely stunning and very magnificent. Magnificent.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So that's. That's kind of what I'm. I'm slowly working towards, but. But baby steps to get there.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Cool.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: You know, I was. I was just on Ryan's podcast a week or so ago, and one of the things that I was fantasizing with about him or with him was the having, you know, I'm kind of jealous of you, Jeremiah, because you get to have, you know, a pretty small collection relative and just any high level hobbyist. I was like, oh man, I would love to have just 30 trees. And for some reason being a professional, it's like I feel like I need to have more and I still do. Like I, I need the repetition of having, you know, 20 Japanese maples to be a good Japanese maple teacher. You know, I need that repetition of having 15 hornbeams to speak confidently about hornbeams. But I, I don't think I'm going to need that in 15, 20 years. And so that's, that's where Rakuyo's headed.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Makes total sense. Fantastic.
You know, one question I had for you, this is one that I was just thinking about the other day is in your opinion, is there a goat of deciduous bonsai?
There's two greatest, greatest of all time.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there's. There's three people that I really look up to and I'm visiting hopefully two of these people in January. But Fu Yuan, of course, the deciduous girl bonsai Village, Fuyoan, Mr. Takayama San, is that is just such a great garden. Many of the trees are multi generational and built really slowly. So I really, really like Fuyoan. And that's what I would say is like the older school kind of goat. Newer school would probably be Ebihara or Oishi. Both Ebihara and Oishi developed trees, cocoa food trees from air layers in a single lifetime. And I think deciduous in general gets a bad rap. You know, I keep hearing this, I'm not sure where it comes from, but someone's spewing it is that, you know, deciduous trees take 50, 60, 70 years to look amazing. And I think if you're doing the right thing at the right time, you can do a lot in 15, 20 years. And Oishi and Ebihara kind of prove that, you know, they, they got things that they air layered into Kokofu and won Kokofu prizes in like a 25 year span.
And so those are two of like the newer guys. I mean they're both older and I'm not even sure Ebihara has trees anymore, but those are like the more recent people who kind of in a single lifetime, you know, built very, very amazing trees in a short kind of period.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Solid. Solid. I have been obsessed. I've just not. Yeah, obsessed on a big kick for Japanese beach and in particular all of Oishi's stuff. Like I've been trying to track down every article that he's written in Kinbone and, and just looking online to see all his before and after pictures or anything that I can. Can find. I don't know what it is recently, but his in particular, one of the beaches that he air layered, that he won a Kokufu prize. I. I know. You know the tree, it's like the rap style one. Yeah, exactly, yes. Raft style. I just like. I don't think it gets better than that really. And I've just been obsessed with that tree in particular. I want to create one of those. I absolutely love Japanese beach and I think that his work is just absolutely phenomenal.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah, he's amazing. That tree in particular is weird because it's quite an anomaly. So I do a lot of studying of Kokofu. Like I'm looking at all the Kokofu books on my bookshelf and I look at them pretty regularly. And one of my students and I were building a database called Kokofu Stats where we're inputting, let's say beach, for example. We're inputting all of the beach trees that we see and we're just putting in data like, you know, formal upright, blue pot. Just trying to take all these different variables, the different sizes. And you know, in doing that, I feel like I have a really good grasp of the trends in Japan at least in the last 50 years of Kokofu. And with Beech. It's interesting because that. That tree that you're talking about, that raft style, there's. There's not really too many other ones like it. In the last 40 years of Kokofu, it's. It's quite an anomaly. It won a Kokofu prize. It's an amazing tree, but it's. It's not like your standard beach DNA. So that's. It's kind of fun to see stuff like that. That's kind of out of the box. I think Japan gets a bad rap a lot of the time for, you know, everything looking the same. And I think cookie cutter. Yeah, yeah, that's. I hate, I hate that phrase because, I mean, there's.
I don't know, people. People will say, oh, in Japan they do this. And really for every time someone says that, I'm like, well, I can give you 20 where they don't do that. And so that's.
But the trend is that they make beach look different than that amazing raft that you and I like from Oishi. So it's interesting to see and notice some of those things. That's a really cool tree.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: It's extraordinary.
Yeah. It's really made me want to air layer, do some Japanese beach air layering and to try and get some raft type features or not just air layer like a piece of the trunk, but like have multiple branches coming off. I would like to create something like that.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I think, I think multiple trunk beach are very underrated and I think that's something that I really want to have more of here in the garden. I love beech, probably after Japanese maple. It's my favorite species. I probably have more beech here in the garden than anywhere else in North America. I have probably 20, 20 beech trees that are kind of significant trees. And then like I said, I have those 200 beach seedlings that are going to be future, future sales trees and forests and whatnot.
But yeah, it's, it's. I think it's, I mean, I love Japanese maple. That's been my first passion and will always be kind of a passion. If you put a bullet to my head and, or a gun in my head and said you have to only have one species for bonsai, it'd probably be Japanese maple. But beach is kind of a very, very, very close second. It's, it's a really special tree.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Solid. Yeah. I was down in California, so that's a great question. I don't know. So I have one. Okay. And I, I didn't get it too long ago. It's an air layer. Peter T. Air layered a Japanese beach. And I was lucky enough to get one of the air layers that he created. But I've only had it now for five months or so, so I think it's too early for me to give a firm answer there.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: But, but it's definitely one that I'm, I'm hoping does well, you know, hornbeam does, does phenomenal down here. So.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: I don't know if they're, you know, I know they're not the same, the same thing, but I'm hoping that, that, that Japanese beach does well. So I'll report back to you.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Have you tried European beach?
[00:28:15] Speaker B: No, I haven't tried any, be any types of beach. I'm just jumping into it.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. European might have a better chance in a less ideal climate. They're known as being a lot tougher. In fact, if anyone's listening and wants to kind of get into beach, European beach is the most friendly.
It's similar to how Korean hornbeam Is to Japanese hornbeam. In Japan, they almost never use Japanese hornbeam because it's just not as sustainable or reliable.
The one that they did use, Carpinus laxiflora, which a lot of the old guys like Sabora Kato would use, they tend to shed branches if you're not doing things right. And so they love Korean hornbeam because one, you could get these amazing trunks from Korea. And two, it's just a really sustainable tree. It's going to hold on the branches pretty predictably. And European beach is really similar. It's. It's like if. If you're going to get into beach, it's like a very good, like, versus like a Japanese beach. If you like kind of are two hours late to a watering. You know, you could have half the branches die versus a European beach. It could get like fully wilted and then come right back like nothing happened. So it's just a lot tougher.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Okay, sweet.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: So I'll try it. Yeah.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
One. One kind of marker or. Or person people that I look at is Jonas, because I think we have fairly similar climates.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: We're both about the same distance from the ocean. He's not too far north. North of me. So we're both in very mild climates. Like, it just doesn't get that hot in the summer, doesn't get that cold in the winter.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: And so I know he has some beach and it seems like he's been really successful with them. I have to talk to him about it. But yeah, he.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: He has European beach. He has like that beautiful forest that was in the first expo is a European beach. Last time I was down there, that was the only beach in his garden. And that seems to do fine in the bay area. I think the bay area used to have a lot of Japanese beach back in the bib days. And I don't see any of those around anymore.
So that could have just been care or other things. Not necessarily as a code.
But yeah, European have that kind of trend of being more tolerant of all these different variables we throw at them.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Got it. All right, well, I am going to get some European beech.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Another good one. Yeah, they're a good one.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: You know, I had a few questions for you about beech, if that's okay. Yeah.
Curious. So I know that the leaves don't fall off as easily as other species of deciduous tree.
I was just curious, have you ever not removed them? And do they, like. They gotta fall off eventually, right? Or do you have issues if you don't remove them? I've Just always seen people remove them.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So that's called marcescence. And a marcescent leaf is when the petiole does not form an abscission layer at the base of that petiole to kind of sever it from the tree in the fall. They will fall off in the spring, however. So if you don't do anything on your beach right around kind of repotting time, when your buds start swelling, that's when they tend to shed their leaves.
I've never seen one, a tree that's kind of kept their leaves kind of as the new leaves are growing. So they do kind of drop them off.
But my, I mean, if you, if you came out to the garden right now, every single beech tree would have all of its leaves on there. Just because I haven't gotten to them yet in the rotation of my work.
And I actually do really enjoy leaving the leaves on because it's, you know, if you come to my, my garden right now, I have like 10 conifers or less, hundreds of deciduous. And to have something that doesn't look like a silhouette is kind of nice variety. So the, the two beach benches that I have are like, you know, pretty sexy looking because they have all those nice bronze leaves on them and just kind of different than the rest of the garden.
But I will remove the leaves. One, because I want to edit the structure.
Two, because if we get a winter storm, you know, my trees are way more ramified than a beech tree in nature. And so if we get an ice storm or snow or ice kind of collects and builds on those branches, then that can cause some, some ramification to break, but mostly just for aesthetics to clean. Take all the leaves off, do any editing of the winter silhouette that needs to be done.
So I will go ahead and remove them. There's a couple other species that are marcescent oaks. Certain types of oaks can be marcescent and hornbeams can actually be marcescent. Sometimes on crayon hornbeams the leaves will stay on. Or definitely other types of hornbeams. American hornbeam is. It's much more morcent. But yeah, I tend to remove the leaves. It's interesting if you look at old Kokofu books, a lot of the older books would actually show the trees in the leaf because the older shows were more about art and less about competition than the newer shows are. And you're probably not going to win a competitive prize if you have leaves on a tree.
And so, yeah, it's a very nice seasonal feeling to have Those bronze leaves, sometimes what they would do on those old trees in a show is they would take half of the leaves off. So you can still get a glimpse of the structure, but you still have that nice seasonal feeling. But it's kind of a fun thing about beech.
There's actually an evolutionary hypothesis on why they keep the bronze leaves. So beech in nature is. Is a dominant tree.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: It's.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: It will take over the forest. It's one of the few species of any thing on this planet that will take over a continent much like us as humans. But beach, you know, before humans took over the entire continent of Europe, basically all the way from the Mediterranean up to the Baltic and northern kind of ocean up there, even up into Scandinavia. And so beech is a very dominant tree in the forest. And they. One of the reasons it gets so dominant, meaning it, you know, just kills off all the competition and creates these big monocultures, is that one of the theories is the leaves shedding in the spring will kill off all the competition. So when the saplings of all the other trees that fell in the fall start growing, then it gets a big. A bunch of beech mulch from all the marcescent leaves falling off in the spring, and it just kind of kills off all the competition and allows beach to kind of continue dominating. So who knows if that's true, but that's one of the fun theories.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: That totally makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: So.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: So you were saying the general trend in the kokufu is they used to show with the leaves and then more and more. So they're removing the leaves?
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Almost every koko food book in the last 10 years will have most of, or all of the leaves removed. Unless you have a tree that actually doesn't look too good, then actually leaving some of the leaves on can help camouflage some less ideal branch work. Or maybe someone's just kind of nostalgic about that older kind of feeling. But. But yeah, most. Most of the trees lately are shown without leaves.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Got it. Nice.
You know, I was curious, in terms of just growth management throughout the year with beech, do you treat different varieties any differently, like European to American to Japanese, or are they pretty much the same? Do you treat them the same?
[00:36:13] Speaker A: They're. They're pretty similar. So I have. I have all three species in my garden, good examples of all three, and they all get treated exactly the same.
And that's one of the nice things about beaches. Is that the work? If you're studying Japanese bonsai or reading the kimbon or whatever, the work that you see apply on those Japanese beech equally applies to European beech and American beech as well. The main difference between the three beech trees are the leaves. So if you strip all the leaves off, even someone who spends a lot of time thinking about beech like I do would have a very hard time telling what, what's what, species wise. So the leaf is like the main signifier. Everything else is very, very similar. And it's. It's kind of structure.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd imagine you probably don't defoliate beech. Do you do any leaf cutting?
[00:37:09] Speaker A: I do a lot of leaf cutting and I'll cut, you know, 70, 80% of the leaf off on my more refined trees throughout the year. So, you know, there's a technique that I've wanted to try that I've never been willing to put one of my trees through it, but I might just get a garden center tree for the sake of experiment is there's a technique where they. Instead of pinching in the spring, and when you brought up defoliating, it made me think of this. You take the entire butt of the beech off, like pluck the entire bud off right when it's swelling, and then kind of force it to grow new bud right then and there.
I wouldn't recommend it for something that's already a bonsai, but if you have a really aggressive young tree that you're trying to slow down and build some twigs on, it's a technique that I. I've never tried, but a lot of people told me about it. It's one I'm curious about exploring.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
Do you typically pinch your beech?
[00:38:06] Speaker A: I pinch if I want to get fine twigs. If I'm. If I'm trying to thicken anything up, I don't pinch them. I let them run. And I actually have found that beech can thicken up quite strongly.
I've grown trunks 5, 6 inches in diameter in just a few years in a bonsai pot. I found it's a great species to grow, just like maple. It grows really fast when you do the right things. But it's.
Yeah, I pinch the things that look more like bonsai. If I'm in fine twig development, I do quite a bit of pinching.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
Solid. I just wanted.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: There's even a variation, variation on the pinching. So they say. Oishi wrote a famous article about beach that he kind of illustrates this. But they say if it's. If it's a really, really refined tree, you pinch it before you as that bud has broken, but it still Looks like a bud. Like, it's. It's. It's just starting to open. You can. You can't see the individual leaves yet, but that bud is kind of bursting open.
Oishi will take that bud and kind of break half of it off without even knowing where he's pinching, per se, versus a younger tree that they're just starting to slow down. They might let it leaf out so that it's still a very early pinch, but you can see the individual leaves, and then you kind of count one or two or three and then pinch at that point. So there's. There's even a variation of pinching beach, depending on kind of where the tree is in. In development.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Ah, very interesting.
Sweet. Well, I feel like Oishi would be the. The man to learn about it from. So.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm excited to hopefully see that one tree that we were talking about in person.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: And beech that is so rad. Jonas went there back in the day. Right. He has pictures on his blog, I think.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: He did, yeah. Yeah.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Quite a few years ago now, I think.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So he's gonna go with me in January, so we're hoping to maybe even film some content with him. We'll see what his appetite is for that. But it would be fun to just pick his brain a little bit about some of those things. Jonas tells a famous story about Oishi. When. When Jonas went to Oishi's garden, you know, Oishi said, how old are you? And. And Jonas said, I don't know. Whatever age he was. And he's like. And he was. He didn't really care. And. And then he turned around and he said, I grew all of these trees from an air layer, and so start some air layers when you get home. Yeah. It was trying to break the stigma of, you know, you can't grow bonsai nice nicely by yourself. He's like, I grew every single one of these trees. You know, start some air layers.
So it's just kind of a funny story. You could have been 60 years old. You could have been 20 years old. He would have told you this.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Totally, totally wanted to give you props. I was just looking on your Instagram account, and one tree that. Well, one forest that I particularly love is your Japanese beech forest. And you have pictures from 2014, 2017, and then current, and it's just so beautiful, and it's come such a long way. Props to you on that one.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Those old photos are kind of embarrassing. Didn't know what I was doing back then. But I guess it makes the current photo more fun. Yeah, that's, that's a fun tree. And I grew that tree from little pencil size things like, literally stuff the diameter of a pencil, the height of a pencil, like, and now it's, it'd probably be in like the extra large category in the expo because of how big it is now. And that was all in a, all in a shallow bonsai pot. And so it's 14, 14 years now with that tree and it's, it's come a really long way. It still has quite a bit of work to go, but yeah, that's one that I'm really fond of.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Ah, great work, great work.
One thing I was impressed about is just like where you found so many beach, I feel like they're, they're kind of hard to come by, especially in.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: The U.S. japanese beach are impossible. So I've been trying to get ever since I had that forest. I, I've liked beach and I've wanted to get more Japanese beach. And I made that forest, I don't know, back in 2008. And so ever since then I've been trying to find more beach. And for the first few years I was probably looking very casually, but the last seven or eight years I've been looking very intensely, making probably hundreds of phone calls, sending out hundreds of emails, trying to find Japanese beets just to get basic seedling kind of stuff. And, and nobody had either seed or seedlings, so it was like impossible to get a hold of. I finally got very, very lucky and came across a batch of about 180 seedlings.
And so.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: No way. Okay.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And unfortunately that well is dried up, but I, I bought every single one of them and I'm getting three emails a week on if I want to sell them.
And I don't at the moment, but it's taken a very, very long time to get them and I feel very lucky to have them and I want to let them go.
I don't want to sell them as seedlings because I want them to have a chance to turn into legitimate bonsai first. And I want to kind of get them on that path before I part with them. But I felt like they were, you know, I could flip them for a lot of money, but I felt like they were too rare, too kind of special to just, you know, flip and make a quick buck.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's so interesting. Like, it seems like European beach are fairly easy to find or easier to find, at least in the States.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I could get you 3,000 right.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Now why is that though? I don't, I don't get it.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: So, so Japanese beach will only produce seed when the tree is pretty old.
Okay, all beach are like that. But Japanese beech for maturity to produce seed are the oldest by about 20 years. So just getting like, if we, if I planted one of my little beech, it would take about 60 to 80 years for it to be mature enough to make seed. That's why as bonsai, you hardly ever see them with, with like beechnuts on them. In fact, I've never seen that in a bonsai pot because I think the trees just simply aren't old enough. But yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. So they have these mash years too. So they won't produce seed every year like an oak tree will.
They will only produce seed once every five to eight years. So let's say you have one that is 80 years old, then you get to collect beechnuts off of it once every five to eight years, something like that. So it's, it's that, that's why we don't see more versus European beach. You know, the other reason I think we see a lot of European beaches, like, like I said, it's a lot more tolerant than Japanese beach. So if you're a nursery or a garden center and you're trying to sell these things, you know, plenty European beach is, is you're going to have a lot less returns on that tree. And it's also a lot more kind of cultivated. So in Japan, they never really found an interest to make a lot of different types of beach. Like they did maples and really domesticate it that way. But in Europe they did that with beech. And so in the nursery industry, you know, there's, you know, I probably have seven different cultivars of European beech, but in the nursery industry, they probably have 20, 20 to 30 at least, and some really cool varieties. There's like a lace leaf variety called Mercedes that's, that's a pretty cool tree. Aspenifolia is another one. That's still a kind of a thin leaf. It's kind of like Siriu, like a thin leaf Japanese maple. So there's a lot of beautiful weeping beach varieties, copper beech varieties. So there's. The European beach has, has a lot more kind of versatility just in the regular, you know, plant world. And so I think that's why nurseries and garden centers and growers kind of focus on it.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Got it. Got it. Interesting.
Did the, does the standard European beach, is that a bit Hardier than the, the cultivars of European Beach.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah, in general, I think everything as this regular kind of green leaf plant is always slightly, quite a bit more kind of hardy. We see that with Japanese maples. So like regular green leaf maple, like I don't really have to protect at all, but any, like, I have a really nice Shishigashira Japanese maple. That's one that whenever temperatures drop, that's one that I always kind of protect just because I've, I've always heard from my friends who work, you know, at Isley Nursery in the nursery industry that, you know, those cultivars are a lot more fragile with the cold.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Cool. Cool.
You know, it's interesting. So I've, I've been following your, your collecting journey a bit, which is, it has been really fun to follow and it's interesting because you started collecting cottonwoods and that is a species that like, I didn't realize, but there's actually a ton around the central coast where I live as well. It's probably like a different subspecies or slightly different, but they grow in the riverbeds down here and there's just tons of them all over the place. Just something that I've been thinking about going after and kind of like something that I didn't necessarily think about, but now, now it's kind of on my mind and I kind of want to go check, check to see if I can find any cool trunks.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Yeah, there's, there's a lot of things that I like about it. So let me tell you about those.
Number one, I can find it. You know, I can't find a beech tree growing here in the woods. So it's, it's, it's local like you said. Another thing that I like about it is that it's incredibly easy to collect. Meaning you, you don't really need. I don't, I'm convinced you don't need roots to bring it home.
It's kind of like when you hear people collecting redwoods, like they do these saw cuts and bring them home.
I, I still try and dig up root, but I, I'm, I'm not coming home with hardly any fine root. I'm coming home with like four or five, you know, big, you know, three, four inch saw cuts of a root that I'll, I'll make underground and I've never had one not make it. So it's, it's like, it's kind of bulletproof for collecting, which I like, I'm able to find. You know, I can get them Pretty high elevation, and so they're growing in. In streams and creeks, really high elevation. And so I'm able to find trunks that are kind of tortured and beat up a little bit. It's. It's the closest thing that I found here to that resembles something like what Maria, my friend Marja in Croatia is doing.
It has a rough kind of bark, so I kind of like that variety when all the trees that I love, like beech and Japanese maple, have. Have smooth bark. So it's, It's. It's a really resilient plant. A funny thing too is it's really sustainable. So if I, I've gone back, I. I didn't go collecting this year, but I did go scouting and I. I've gone back to where I collected the last, you know, several trees that I collected, and there's a new tree growing.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: In the soccer growth. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: So it's kind of crazy for all those reasons.
And so I've been enjoying it for that. I'm not convinced that it's going to make a good bonsai yet. And I think.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Too early to tell.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: Too early to tell. Yeah. Actually, one of my students, Maciek and I, just did a podcast on cottonwoods, and so we kind of dive deep into our experiences there. But it's, it's.
I like it as a plant. So far, it gets better color than alders, so at least it has fall color. It can check off at least one box to kind of give it something that's special. The leaf seems to reduce really well. I think it's going to be a lot more like birch, where unless you are 100% on top of it, you're going to lose branches. So if you miss a watering, you're going to lose branches. If you let the suckers run, you're going to lose branches. If anything gets shaded out for even, you know, a small amount of time, it's going to lose a branch. But if you can really stay on top of it. My students call them sport bonsai, where they're just a lot more labor intensive. If you can stay on top of it, then I think it's. I think it's going to work. But, yeah, jury's still out.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Makes sense. Yeah. Down here it's great. We don't get all that great fall color just because we don't get much of a winter down here.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: But the, the cottonwood in particular has a really beautiful, like, golden yellow in the fall and. Yeah, so that's cool. I really, at first, I Wasn't sure what they. What they were until I did some Googling to figure it out. And you started talking about them.
Almost remind me of, like, aspen or something, the way the leaves kind of like blow in the wind. I think that's kind of a cool look as well.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're just like Aspen. They're a poplar genus, so very closely related.
And the other thing that I think is cool about them is I think it's assuming it works well for bonsai. I think it's going to be incredibly versatile. Meaning it's a plant that's not just going to grow well in my backyard, but I can sell it to someone who lives in Boise or Salt Lake or Spokane or down in California. Like, I think it's going to be a tree that is, like, very versatile that. That almost anybody can have and most zip codes. So I like that about it. You know, I. If I could find them, I would be collecting vine maples all day long. But, you know, I drive them down and sell them at the Expo and they probably all die because they like the kind of temperate rainforest that we have up here.
So I think the cottonwood is going to be a pretty versatile plant. And. And I think it's something that a lot of people could have access to all over the west, really all over North America, because it's everywhere.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Totally. Very cool, man. Well, you got some really nice trunks, and I'm very excited to follow along on that. On that journey.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I was so tied up with the Expo this year that I couldn't go grab some more, but I'm very eager to expand the cottonwood kind of game a little bit. And I also. I kind of want to stop calling them cottonwoods because, like, it has such a bad connotation.
Like, people, when I say cottonwood, they probably think of, like, allergies and.
And here they have all that little cottony stuff that falls down. Funnily enough, I was doing some research, and most people actually don't have a cottonwood allergy. They have an allergy to something else.
[00:53:27] Speaker B: That they blame it on. Cottonwood.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah, they blame it.
The ones that I'm collecting. The other common name is balsam poplar. So I've been.
I think I'm going to rebrand them and says balsam poplars.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: That's pretty awesome. I like it.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: But solid.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a fun, fun tree to kind of play with. The other interesting thing is I don't know how all the other ones work, but the Cottonwood that we have here at Balsam Poplar is. You know, the leaf, when you collect it, is kind of looks like a beach. Like it's very.
It's kind of. How would you describe it? Like a. Just very beach, like. Like kind of like a ovate kind of leaf. And then as the tree matures, it gets more like that kind of arrowhead looking kind of shape where it's much wider at the base and that. That real cottonwood kind of feeling. I haven't seen it do it yet in a bonsai pot, but the. The trees here, I've definitely noticed that. So it has kind of different leaf morphology depending on kind of what it's doing. It's really interesting.
[00:54:40] Speaker B: Are you collecting them in the early spring, like late winter, early spring time period, or have you collected them several different times?
[00:54:50] Speaker A: I collect them in the fall.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: In the fall. Okay.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So after they've kind of turned color and shed their leaves, that's my ideal time to collect them.
I think you could collect them in spring. The one issue with collecting them in spring is spring at the elevation that I'm collecting them is summer at my house. And so it's, you know, depending on if we have a heat wave, it could shock the plant. I think for cottonwood, it wouldn't really matter. So. Because I missed my fall window this year, I'm gonna try it this coming spring. But all of the deciduous collecting that I do is. Is generally in the fall and I.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: Nice, cool. Fantastic. I think some of that depends on just where you live and what your climate is. Like, you know, like, it's so mild here. Like I can. My repotting season, like, could be very lengthy. Like I can repot in like December, January, February, whereas most people, they push it way further into the new year.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think in general, collecting deciduous, like dormant season, like either, like late fall all the way up to kind of when the tree before it leaves out. That's. That's kind of what I've heard from most deciduous collectors, like Maria and Andrea over in Croatia. They do all their collecting in the winter.
You want to kind of when the tree is dormant, that's like the prime opportunity to kind of dig it. So, yeah, you could probably dig them down where you are. November, December, January, February. You probably have a pretty long season.
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Sweet, sweet.
I just need more, more free time and then I could go get after a little more.
[00:56:32] Speaker A: I know, I know.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Same for you. Yeah.
I think it's so cool though, because like, what we need more of in this country is people going out experimenting, collecting different types of trees that might work for. Well, for bonsai and just championing. Champion. Championing. I don't know if that's a word. Basically, Bob Shyman ing the species. I think he really kind of, like, put redwood on the map. Bob Shyman did. I mean, they collected them beforehand, but he really just collected a ton, and then he's selling them, and then now redwood is like a thing that people utilize within bonsai. And I think that we need more of that. So it's so cool to hear about new varieties of trees that we're collecting. And I'm. I'm stoked to hear that you're experimenting with cottonwoods.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's. Experimenting is fun. I would caution anyone who's listening, like, don't have 400 young ones in your. In your yard until we kind of check the box on. Okay, this is going to work really well. But I think for my approach to experimenting has always been, look, if I find an amazing trunk somewhere, it's worth it. Like, it doesn't matter if it's going to be a terrible bonsai or not. Like, I find amazing trunk, it's worth it. If I don't have that amazing trunk, I'm probably less likely to, like, devote a lot of resources to something because it's. For one, I just lack space in the garden. But. But two, it's. It's, you know, if I. If, like all of the young stuff that I have, like the beach or I'm starting a batch of Desojo Cascades, you know, it's like, if I'm going to invest a lot of resources and energy into something, like, I want the payoff to be there. So I kind of feel like in, like, growing natives from scratch. Unless you see, like, really good examples down the road, like, one you could point to is red maple. Like, Michael Hagedorn has an amazing red maple that was in the Expo. And so I wouldn't hesitate to start a batch of red maples. But, you know, another type of maple that's maybe untested, unproven, I'd be kind of hesitant to start.
[00:58:45] Speaker B: That makes sense 100%. That's very logical. I'm growing a few natives, but usually they're of a species which Japan uses on a regular basis. So, for example, like, I'm. I'm growing American hornbeam, and I'm growing the Wisconsin red variety, which gets beautiful fall color. And one idea that your dad actually gave me was American persimmon. But Now I only have, you know, three of these. And I know on bonsai wire I've heard you guys talk about growing in batches. So I'm growing like very small patches kind of as an experimentation. But yeah, a hundred percent I would agree with you. Like, don't have a million tiny trees that you're growing out if they're still experimental. Like you want to make sure that your investment is going to pay off.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, when you look at Japan, like they have, they have poplar in Japan and like it's like the tree exists. I was talking to Dasako about it, but it's, you never see it as a bonsai. And so that's, that's, that's like always a giant question mark. I think if you're playing with natives, choosing parallels to traditional trees like American beech, American hornbeam, different types of maples, you know, those, those are great because we have really good roadmaps for those cottonwood. We're kind of inventing the roadmap as we go and lead anywhere. Right. So it's, it's, yeah, that's, it's kind of the fun, exciting thing about it. But I think if you're experimenting with it, you have to be really open about that because I think you have to be able to say, okay, this isn't working.
One of the best examples from Japan is actually Japanese flowering cherry. You know, it's the second most famous plant to come out of Japan after Japanese maple. It's, you know, tree known all around the world. And how can we never see flowering cherries as a bonsai? Well, I can tell you because they suck.
They're like one of the least reliable trees in a bonsai pot. And I have a few, but they're constantly fighting me. And so I think too many people have been fought for too many generations on those plants in a bonsai pot. It's not that you'll never see one, but it's very, very rare. And I think for, for good reason.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: Super intelligent points, 100%.
You know, one thing I wanted to chat about briefly was your video regarding growing ume. Well, I guess while we're on the subject of growing young things.
Yeah, so that's a. So basically I think that one of the main points that you made was that if you. That in the us if we're starting ume from seed cutting, air layer, that we're not going to necessarily have like a Kokufu prize winning level tree within 20, 30 years. Whereas like other types of trees Like Japanese maple, maybe beech. We could have like kokufu prize winning, which is the highest level trees.
[01:01:51] Speaker A: Right.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: And I guess initially I was a little bit offended by that because I am growing ume, right? From seeding, seed and cutting.
But I think it's a really good point and it's an interesting one because I guess to me it's all about the showing the age on the trunk. Whereas like Japanese maple. And now depending on the variety of maple that you get but, or beech, it's going to look like an old tree in 30 years. Whereas Ume, if you put a 30 year old tree next to a hundred year old tree, there's going to be a distinct differential between the bark qualities. And so I think it's a really good point. I still think that we should be growing Ume. It's a good idea for us to grow Ume, but it's more of like a. I think in 30 years I could have a badass Ume. But yeah, it's still not going to look like a hundred year old tree.
However, I think it's one of those things that we can pass on to the next generation and it will be badass, like even more badass, you know, with the next generation.
So. Interesting points there. I don't know if you have any thoughts.
[01:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, that, that was like, that was the one video that I did that I. I'm unsure about. Like I still to this day question, like, should I take that down? Because I don't think I did a good job articulating my point enough.
I think you kind of nailed it though. Like, basically, like, if you want to grow Ume, you have to be prepared for a tremendous amount of heartache. Because let's say you plan a field of Ume and you do all this work to collect all these varieties which are really hard to find and source, and you plant that field and then you go to make your first chop. Probably three quarters of them are going to die back down to the soil in my experience, and then regrow from suckers. I worked at Telperion Farms on the Ume field several times and they were just the. Out of everything, they had just like the least predictable, most frustrating plant to grow.
That all being said and the, the points of my video being said, it's one of my favorite plants. Like I love ume. I have, looking out at my driveway, I have like, you know, 20 of them planted along the driveway. So I. It's a tree that I love. It's just, you know, when we look at what they use for bonsai in Japan. It's. It's. It either has one of. One of two criteria or sometimes two of two criteria. It's culturally significant, or it works really well for bonsai. Something like a beech works really well for bonsai. I can't think of a direct cultural reason that they grow beech, but it works really well for bonsai. It's a beautiful tree. Ume doesn't work very well for bonsai, but it's highly cultural because it's tied in with the. The New Year's celebrations, and it's in all the poems and paintings, and it's just kind of deeply ingrained into Japanese culture.
And so my point with that video was mostly, look, if you want ume, like the ones in the kokufu books, like the roadmap of growing them to getting them to look like that isn't really there. The roadmap was, hey, we just found some cool ume that we're growing in this family's porch for the last 150 years, and some bonsai guy bought it, and now it's in the kokofu. And so they're finding these kind of found objects similar to yamadori, and they're kind of decorating the trunks. And I think with grafting, that's a lot easier than working with a young plant. So I don't want to discourage anybody from growing ume because I think it's a great plant, but I don't think it's a great plant for bonsai. And I just want people to know that going in and that that was kind of the point of the video. And I think what I don't think I did in the video, but I should have is give a good, viable alternative. So there's a type of cherry actually, so stiff furnace, but. But cherry rather than apricot. It's a Kojo no Mai. It's a kind of a dwarf contorted cherry. They've been floating around the bonsai circ the US For a little bit. But kojo no mai is a amazing, amazing type of prunus. So, number one, it flowers way more reliably and predictably than ume.
It still gets bark. Not as good a bark as ume, but it. I've never had it lose a branch for any reason whatsoever versus anyone who knows ume knows, like, it's. It's not going to make itself pretty by itself. Like, you have to put a lot of labor and hours into it. And so, yeah, that's. That Video is pretty controversial, even for me, because I don't know about that.
[01:06:31] Speaker B: But very complex points that you were trying to articulate. I think you did a good job. I mean, it's.
[01:06:38] Speaker A: It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. If you were a fan, I didn't do it well. I think a lot of people were, you know, and that means I didn't communicate. Point clearly. Another. Maybe another good comparison is like, ponderosa pine. Like, sure, you can grow ponderosa pines from seed, but you're probably better off just going to see Randy or the back.
[01:06:59] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:07:00] Speaker A: You know.
[01:07:01] Speaker B: Okay. That. That. Yeah, that makes total sense.
[01:07:03] Speaker A: That that's kind of how I think about it. It's like, not the most easy plant to work with. It's not. Doesn't have the best kind of foliage features very similar to ume, but if you find a really cool trunk, it's worth it. And that's got it. My challenge with ume.
[01:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, for me, I think I've had maybe seven or so species or varieties of ume now, and I think it's definitely variety specific. So, like those ebay umes that we got, I don't. I could never get that thing. Those are like the worst, you know, so it's definitely a spectrum.
[01:07:42] Speaker A: And I have a difference with those eBay UMEs are those, I believe, were more fruiting ones. So like a variety or genetic that you would get, like, if you were growing ume for fruit production versus, like, ornamental flowering ones like Kobai. And a lot of the famous kind of ume that we see in Kokofu. And I think the ones that are kind of selected for the flowers rather than the fruit have better longevity and sustainability. Still not totally anything else, but. But. But better than those. Those field ume that we had for sure. Yeah.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: I also wonder if some. Some of it is climate specific. Like, I know ume are quite susceptible to fungal issues. And so I wonder if maybe in the. The Pacific Northwest, because it's so rainy and cloudy all the time, maybe there's more fungal things going on. Um, because I have a. A couple varieties that I found now which are like very standard varieties which seem to be not. I. I'm definitely not gonna say bulletproof, because long term, I feel like ume, you just can't say that about ume. However, it's not a bulletproof. Much more hearty.
[01:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:08:56] Speaker B: And they will create a branch, and that branch will stay, and I can develop and continue working on the branch.
So I do think it's. It's very Variety specific. I wonder if it's also where you live. Umay do well in certain areas. They don't do well in other areas. However, you have some ume that look really nice and they look like they're growing really heartily at your place.
[01:09:19] Speaker A: So yeah, they, I. I've never seen them get fungus here in my yard. I've seen the, the dead wood get fungus like a mushroom growing out of the dead wood, but not, not actually the tree or the foliage itself. And they do grow well here. I mean we have tons of prunus trees all over, but it's just like, it's tough to like walk over to the ume bench and like just see like, I know, just branches dying randomly. Like it's, it's by far the most random, unpredictable tree of any traditional species I've ever worked with.
And so it's just like, like you go over the beach bench and everything's good and then you go over the ume bench and it's like, like Mad Max over there. Like it's, it's just kind of a frustrating, frustrating species. And it's, it's so extra frustrating because I love it so much. Like that bark with those flowers, it's. It's like so great. But I don't know, it's just like the reason that ume grafting is such a thing and you don't have to graft deciduous trees unless they just are terrible for bonsai. And that's why we have to graft ume so much is just, you know, sometimes we defoliate them and they come back. Sometimes we defoliate them and they don't like. It's a very, very, very hard tree to read and I don't think anyone's really kind of mastered it. Which means I think the tree is just not predictable.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: Totally makes sense.
You know, there is so at Aichean and they started a bunch of ume from seed like 100 years ago. The first, first generation owner of I chan started quite a few seedlings. And there's one tree which is a very large like light pink colored ume with. And it had almost no deadwood. Back when I was went there in 2015, there was like almost no deadwood on the tree, but phenomenal bark.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: And.
[01:11:22] Speaker B: And so in my mind I always had this vision of growing ume with no deadwood at all.
And I didn't know if that was really possible or not, but that. That tree at icien kind of showed me, oh, maybe it is possible. However, in speaking with some of the apprentices there. More recently, I heard that a couple of the branches may have died and the tree had to be redesigned. And so now there are some deadwood features on the Ume. So I kind of feel like ume is just an A tree where you are kind of ever evolving it and deadwood is inevitable. There will be deadwood features on an Ume. Yeah, it's just something that you kind of have to redesign.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's actually something most people get wrong with young Ume is they take a 10 year old plant and they want to put all this deadwood on it. Like, trust me, just like wait a few years, a branch is going to die, you're going to get some deadwood. Like, like. I think most of the special deadwood that we see on Ume from Kokofu is not necessarily intentional but happenstance. And yeah, they might have like something died and then they clean it up and make it look better. But I don't think, you know, they were taking five year old trees and carving Shari in them and whatnot in a way very different than junipers, which you can actually do that and get really nice growth deformities that make the tree look more exceptional. So I think that's a mistake a lot of people make with young Ume is they have a 20 year old tree and okay, let's carve it. Right. Because it's. I see this old one in Japan with, with amazing bark and all this deadwood and it's like my tree doesn't even have bark yet. But let's start cutting it up. That's this one good way to kill an ume pretty fast is, is carve up half of the tree when it's young.
[01:13:07] Speaker B: But totally that's funny.
You know, talking about ume alternatives, one thing that I've always kind of fantasized about, there's a lot of old almond orchards around here, like abandoned almond orchards and they have really pretty flowers as well.
I've always thought if I had some extra time and for a while I was actually like straight up throwing ads on Craigslist and stuff. But I didn't get too far with it. But if you could find like an old, abandoned, beat up, twisty, funky almond, I think that could be cool. Or you could even graft ume onto it if you wanted that.
[01:13:46] Speaker A: That would be dope as hell. And honestly, that's a way better roadmap. Like if, if people were investing all of their energy there, I think then if you Want Ume, you just buy one of those and graft ume branches on and then you have the nice unique trunk that gives you the age. And then you can just put your kobay or your. Or whatever variety you like onto that. And now you have a kokofu quality ume. You know, like, I think that's a much better pathway than the young stuff, but I'm not against the young stuff. But I just want people to know there's going to be some heartache along the way.
I don't know who's grown ume for more than 10 years, WHO recommends it.
[01:14:29] Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Fair. Okay.
And so. So in that video was your point, was some of it also doing with like the age of the bark, like so in 30 years you can't. Or was that kind of a minor point, would you say on the video.
[01:14:48] Speaker A: More so I think the, the point was more look in Japan there. The road map for kokufu ume is very different than what I'm seeing most people focus on here in the US But I do think you're totally right about bark. Like, if, if you're trying to get a tree that looks good in your lifetime, if that's like the explicit goal, then you're not going to get a Expo winning ume in. In your lifetime. I don't think if you were going to do that, you know, you would probably have to accelerate growth in the ground, which then would make the tree less predictable. But in a container, I'm not sure you're going to get there in a short amount of time.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: Makes sense. Totally, totally. Cool.
Very nice.
[01:15:35] Speaker A: Hopefully that resolved. I know I'm throwing a lot of shade at Ume and I think all of it's deserved because it is really frustrating tree. But I do want to like, and I didn't make the point enough in that video. Like, I do love this plant. I just, it's. It's even more frustrating to me that I love it so much and it's such a letdown in so many different ways of training.
And yeah, like, if everyone who's growing ume was growing something like Kojo no Mai, like, I think we'd have a lot more happy people and flowering trees that, you know, have survived.
The Kojo no Mai is one that if you're, if you like Ume, you should definitely look at that because you'll get incredible flowers every single year. You'll never have a branch die if you treat it well. Like it's. It's just a really Reliable thing, but gross and Moomi to prove me wrong.
[01:16:31] Speaker B: Very nice. Very nice. Well, I am growing some Ume. We'll see how they turn out. I kind of think of it more as like a, just a fun project. Want to see where I can get. And I'm really excited to pass them on to the next generation. I feel like we're not going to get really badass Ume unless we either import them or we grow them. And then the next generation will kind of like reap the ultimate benefits.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: 100 yeah. And if, like, if you, if there's a plant that you care about, like, you should be growing it. Like, it's, it's. If you like, don't rely on someone else to like, make it happen because chances are it won't. Like, if you love Ume, then prove me wrong. Grow lots of Ume. Be the Ume person. Like, I'm not saying you just like anyone who's listening because, like, be the change you want to see. If you want to see more Ume, then it's going to require a lot of people to have them. But, but there are alternatives out there or alternative approaches. Like what you were saying. Like, find a cool almond orchard, get a trunk that's an expo trunk, you know, graph some branches and in five, ten years you can have a tree that's, that's quite a bit farther along.
[01:17:39] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. Cool. Hey, Andrew, you mind if we take a quick break?
We are back.
Yeah. So Ume got me thinking about deadwood within deciduous bonsai.
I guess I'm curious, like, what species you think deadwood is acceptable when it comes to deciduous. One in particular, as I got my first, first one recently. I'm not sure if, if you have any, I don't know if you've, I've seen you post, but do you have any pomegranates in your collection?
[01:18:16] Speaker A: I had some young ones at a point and they, I moved them along. I'm on the hunt for a nice old one. But yeah, until I come across that I have them in students collections and not my own.
[01:18:30] Speaker B: Got it. Got it.
I was wondering if they did well in the Pacific Northwest. I know down in, down here they do pretty good actually.
[01:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah, they do. They do great up here. There's. I, I had the Nekijon variety, the, the kind of twisted one that we've seen and that did amazingly well up here. But the trunk was a little smaller than I, than I wanted. And so I, I, I moved those along. But yeah, they, they do really, really well, you know, I, I'm not sure deadwood on those would make sense because most of those are grown rather than found. But I think the orchard ones from California, the deadwood makes sense. I was just at Ryan's the other day and he had, he had a really beautiful pomegranate that has, you know, it's basically all deadwood, very little living, and it was just, it's really cool. So I think, you know, orchard trees, I think make a lot of sense. You know, these trees are kind of tortured from their years of servitude in the field and kind of harsh conditions. That's why I think fruit trees like ume and crabapple look, look good with deadwood.
So I'm not opposed to deadwood on deciduous trees, but I want it to feel right and feel kind of appropriate. And I think like, like I was saying with ume, I think that, that where deadwood gets very distasteful for me is when it's forced, especially at too young of an age, taking a 10, 15, 20 year old tree and trying to make it look like a hundred or two hundred year old tree. I think very rarely is that ever successful. And so if you're collecting, you know, an old vine maple that's been tortured because it's been growing on the lava flow and it has a nice interesting hollow base, I think that feels right. But taking a vine maple from a garden center and trying to do that, it takes quite a long time for you to torture it and then kind of look good in my opinion.
So that's kind of my approach with deciduous deadwood is. And with deciduous deadwood, I think hollows and shari make way more sense than djinn, because djinn or dead branches is very temporary in the timescale. Like a dead branch on an oak tree. We had a windstorm here last night, so all the dead branches just shedded themselves. They all fell off. So it's like a very small glimpse of time when you see it. Not like a juniper, which can have deadwood for decades or even hundreds of years.
So. Yeah, just kind of different in that regard.
[01:21:06] Speaker B: Nice, very well articulated, great points. And I'm right there with you. I think that if you try and force deadwood on a young deciduous tree, doesn't look right. I also think certain species, like, it just feels wrong to me. Like a Japanese maple, I'm not too into deadwood.
[01:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:21:24] Speaker B: Whereas an, an oak may. I could see it more. So like. Yeah, I don't know if that's just bias or if that's right or not. But that's kind of how I feel.
[01:21:33] Speaker A: No, I, I, I feel similar. Although I do have one Japanese maple. You know, I, I really like variety and so I have one Japanese maple. It's like a probably 120 year old tree collected out of someone's front yard in Portland. And, and I, it's been at bonsai for like 50 years before it was in the ground for forever. And that has a big shari down the trunk. But it feels right because you can actually like, you can feel the age coming off the tree. So it's definitely weird and obscure. It's the only Japanese maple I have with deadwood. It's like a tough contrast to see that, but for some reason because the tree's so old, it doesn't look out of place, you know, for sure.
[01:22:13] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah. So I got this pomegranate. My, I've, I have a few twisted pomegranate, but they're younger stock. One of them I got from Ed Clark. I'm gonna guess it might be like 10 years old or something like that. But yeah, I, I purchased one that I'm, I, I really like it. However, I, I was on the fence about purchasing it or not and basically like some, there's some, there's some holes essentially in it. Like some of the, the truck trunk has kind of rotted, although the outer area is very twisted. And to me it looks like. Oh, you know, I'm going to text you a picture of it.
[01:22:54] Speaker A: Oh nice.
[01:22:55] Speaker B: Or a video of it.
[01:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to see.
[01:22:57] Speaker B: But there's some hollows. But I just thought it was so cool and so old that I, I picked it up.
But I'm not sure because I don't love deadwood necessarily on these types of trees. And ultimately it's, it's really kind of a negative thing. But I also wonder like with this pomegranate, is this just kind of the, the ark and, or does the tree's life have an arc to it and the, you know, maybe like I'm, I'm on the other side of the ark where it was perfect and now it's kind of. Hopefully there's no sound on that video that I just sent you.
[01:23:39] Speaker A: Can you hear it come across just slightly, but. Oh gosh, sorry. I have my, my AirPods in that mute everything. So it's like I'm, I'm on like my airplane mode.
Whatever.
[01:23:53] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[01:23:54] Speaker A: That's a really cool tree.
You know, on that tree in particular, the deadwood doesn't feel out of place. I think it contributes to that gnarly kind of feeling. And I think it's past the point of just from a quick glance. It's kind of past the point of return from where you could.
[01:24:11] Speaker B: For sure.
[01:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:13] Speaker B: There's no safe. There's no going back.
[01:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But that's an incredible tree.
And that's how I like to think about deadwood is like, if it feels right, then it, it, then it's fine. You know, if it, if it feels forced or out of place, then that's where I start to have issues with it. So.
[01:24:31] Speaker B: Totally makes sense. Question for you. Do you.
Do you think it is too artificial? If I were to collect a pomegranate from one of my other trees and then put it on that tree for a show, like, are you down with that or you think that's cheating?
[01:24:54] Speaker A: There are some trees in the Expo that I think did that, or at least one of them.
I haven't decided. I haven't really come up with an opinion about that. For some reason it feels like you're slightly in the Phoenix graft kind of camp of trying to trick people.
And it's, it feels maybe cheating to a degree because, like, not, not you in particular, but just like whoever who does that maybe didn't have the technique to actually get the fruit on the tree themselves. You know, fertilize the tree properly, you know, maintain it well enough so that it did that naturally.
You know, I think I'm less okay with someone just going to the grocery store buying pomegranates and just like gluing them on their tree than I am. Like, if, if, if you did have some that fell off the tree and you put them back, that, that feels more right. But I don't know. It's a great. It's a gray area. It's. It's.
It's not as bad as one of the other Phoenix graph type things, but it feels like it's in that camp, you know?
[01:26:01] Speaker B: Oh, man, I just got this vision of like, you're. I'm displaying my pomegranate at the Expo and then someone's like, oh, just run to Vons really quick. Or Albertsons. And I don't know if you guys have those run to Whole Foods and grab a couple pomegranates to throw on there.
[01:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah, like, yeah, like that. That feels like it's cheating, like, you know, for sure. And, and they were just so big too.
The scale wasn't right. So I don't Know.
Yeah, I don't know. You know.
[01:26:36] Speaker B: Do you like?
[01:26:38] Speaker A: Good.
[01:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah. No, no, no. Go ahead. Phoenix craft, huh?
[01:26:41] Speaker A: Oh, well, slight tangent, but, like, the, the thing that I think is 100 cheating that I absolutely hate is when people do the, like the wire trees. To me, that's the Phoenix graft of deciduous. So it's like when you like, take a wire cage and you like, wrap 400 trident seedlings around it. To me, that 100% equivalent to, to like finding to the Phoenix craft. Yeah, that's, that's the equivalent. I, I hate those. They also look terrible. Like, even 20, 30, 40 years later, like, they look like they were made that way. They look way worse than an actual Phoenix graph does, in my opinion.
[01:27:19] Speaker B: So, yeah, I get, I guess I'm fine if people want to Phoenix do a Phoenix graphs. I'm, I'm cool with it. But I, I, I would be upset if they tried to pass it as, like, not a Phoenix craft. I think that's, that's the, like, hard. No, not cool for me.
[01:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the thing where it gets tricky going back to pomegranates or just any fruiting tree in a show, I think the thing that's tricky is, in my opinion, a poor judge will see fruit and reward a tree maybe higher. Versus, to me, I'm just, in my, my own opinion, I'm looking at the quality of the, the trunk and the branches and all the work that's been done and the fruit or flowers or whatever can be a nice X factor. Like, if like two trees look great and one of them is in like, great fall color or one of them has like a full set of fruit, like, it can like, like be like a tiebreaker.
But I much more care about the quality of the tree. And I think for a judge who is maybe less experienced, that that could very much influence them. If you just go to Costco and glue out a bunch of fake pomegranates on your tree. Not fake pomegranates, but fake pomegranates to the tree. To your tree. You know, I think, I don't know.
I'm not against it. I'm just not excited about it.
[01:28:38] Speaker B: Maybe this for sure, it is gray. It's very gray.
[01:28:43] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you feel about it? I mean, I haven't thought too well about it yet.
[01:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I guarantee you it's going down even in Japan. Like, it's, it's happening.
[01:28:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:28:53] Speaker B: I think. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:28:56] Speaker B: I guess if you're gonna do it, you gotta do it well. And you gotta hide it. I mean, by hide it, I mean, don't just have, like, a clear piece of wire or something where you can absolutely tell that it's been attached. So do it well. And. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of think that if you can't tell, then it's okay. Although it's funny because, like, I'm not down with Phoenix graphs like in a show. Oh, no, I'm down with Phoenix crafts in a show. I'm not down with someone trying to pass it as real, but, like. But then I guess maybe that. That kind of is. Goes against what I was saying about. It's okay if you can't tell.
[01:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. If it's well executed, I'd be much more, I don't know, warm to the idea, you know?
Yeah.
[01:29:48] Speaker B: I do like both pomegranate trees and say, like, Chinese quince. I really like to see the fruit on them. I think it's cool. Like, if you have ramification and fruit, it's. It's very nice. Looks great.
[01:30:00] Speaker A: It's like a nice, nice X factor that can tip it over the edge and make it special. So.
[01:30:05] Speaker B: For sure. For sure.
[01:30:07] Speaker A: I agree there. Cool.
[01:30:10] Speaker B: What with deciduous trees, one thing that I kind of get stuck on is there's, like, three pot colors that I like, and I want to get out of it, but I'm having a difficult time getting out of it. So I like blue pots, I like green, green pots, and I like cream pots, and it's hard for me to branch out past that. What do you think?
[01:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you're going to see. 90% of my garden, if not more, is going to be those three colors. So I'm with you, but maybe not intentionally with you. Like, I. I didn't. A lot of my pots are, you know, I. I get, like, a lot of, you know, if I'm working with a potter and. And they, like, make a pot that has a crack in it they can't sell, that's a pot that I. I end up getting more often than not. So, you know, I. I do get a lot of secondhand kind of pots for the garden.
And, you know, I'm kind of just limited by what I get, but I do want more color in the garden. You know, it's. It's hard for me, like, when you specialize in something, when you come to Rakuyo and you see 100 deciduous trees, you know, big deciduous trees, like, they're all probably going to be in ovals. So how can we make this not boring, right? And they're all probably going to be in that three color range that you said. So how do we. How do we spice it up a little bit so that it's not just blue oval, cream oval, green oval, like, repeat?
And so I've been more interested in different colors. One of the trees I had at the expo, my coreopsis, I had it in a purple pot, which I thought was fun, because the yellow flowers that it gets in the spring, yellow and purple, are kind of direct, complimentary colors. So for like one and a half weeks a year, that tree looks like super exceptional, like, color wise.
So I am trying to spice it up a little bit. But I think, you know, I think maybe a bigger question is a lot of people ask, is there a right color for a tree? And the answer is 100% no. There can be better matches, but there's not like, one right thing. It's not like I have a Japanese maple. So the answer is blank, cream, or whatever you want to say. I think it's nice when you have an X factor, like fall color or a fruit or a flower. It's nice to play off complementary colors. So one of the reasons the Christmas colors work so well, since it's the holiday season, is red and green are direct complementary colors. And so if you have something with a red berry like Ilex serrata, then a green pot can actually really nicely complement that stewardia with that orange kind of bark.
Looks great in a. Also a green pod. So you can find things that play well with different things. But at the end of the day, it's. I'm not saying, okay, I have this Japanese maple. It has to go in this color pot.
[01:33:07] Speaker B: Makes sense. Makes sense. Okay.
What do you think about red pots?
[01:33:14] Speaker A: Oh, red pots. I, you know, I. I have, you know, half dozen or dozen in the garden. They're more of a muted red, so they're more like a burgundy than like, punch you in the face kind of red.
So I think for shohin, they're 100% necessary. Like, a shohin display without a pop of color to me is a bad shohin display. Like, I need to see a bright red, a bright yellow, bright blue to make that display exciting to me.
And not in necessarily every display, but in a shohin show. But for big trees, like, it's harder the bigger to the tree you get, the more you want. At least for me, the more I want the pot to be kind of secondary to the tree. Not the first thing that I look at. And so I'm Fine with red glazes. But as long as the. The color and the finish aren't too loud and flashy, and as long as the texture, like the pattern is. Is kind of more subtle rather than like, super, like, tie dye looking or other things. Those are the kind of things I think.
[01:34:24] Speaker B: Solid. Yeah. No, everything that you said, 100%.
I kind of feel. One other interesting color is like, I always. When I first got into bonsai, I strongly disliked yellow pots.
I feel like as. As time has progressed, I still don't love yellow pots. However, if they have a heavy patina on them, it's more acceptable in my mind.
[01:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:34:51] Speaker B: And then also. Yeah. For shohin, I think it works as well.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Like, yellow to me doesn't look good when it's fresh. Like, like go over to now's and, like, get a yellow pot right out of the kiln right after it's been baked. It's like, okay, it's a little. Little much like, it's a little loud. But then give it 10 years on the bench, and it actually is quite lovely. I think for flowering and fruiting trees, yellow is pretty important. So, like, red and yellow work pretty well together. So I like. You'll see a lot of Ilex rada in Japan in yellow pots. You see a lot of callicarpa, purple and yellow together, like we were saying.
So the beauty berries and yellow pots. But I think, you know, if you have more than 10 Japanese maples, slipping one or two of them in a yellow pot is going to be nice. So that, like we said, not everything is just in green, cream, blue, repeat.
If you have 10 deciduous trees, you can get away with those colors just fine. But if you have more than that, you might want to spice it up a little for sure. That's the difference where you're trying to create nice variety, not just for the individual tree in the pot, but also to have a nice garden. So you could perfectly match a cream pot to a Japanese maple tree, and you bring it to a show, and it's, you know, a winning combo. But then you come visit the garden. You don't want to see, you know, 200 white pots or cream pots, you know, like. So it's. That's like another variable that I don't think a lot of people think about is like, there's the right match for the tree, but it's also got to work in with everything else. You have to. To make a nice, visual kind of appearance in the garden.
[01:36:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely sweet. How are you doing on time? Man. Maybe a couple more. Or you.
[01:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm good. So, so we can.
[01:36:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:36:44] Speaker A: Keep going as long as.
[01:36:46] Speaker B: Cool, cool.
Okay. I, I just got like two more for you, I guess. Yeah, you know, I was curious, so I follow the, what's it called? Bonsai Society of Portland on Facebook. I'm in the, in the group and I see your, your dad posting like almost every day and I can tell that he just has a tremendous passion for bonsai, which I think is really cool. Yeah, what's that like? I mean, like, I, I can't imagine my dad is not into bonsai. I mean, are you guys sitting down at the dinner table every night and like jumping into bonsai discussion?
Like.
[01:37:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not. Because for me it's to have that kind of work life balance. Like I, you know, I, I'm talking about bonsai all day long when I'm working, when I'm talking to clients, when I'm, you know, traveling and teaching. So when I'm home, I just want to be like a normal person to a degree.
But no, it's, it's. I mean, he's an amazing help for me. I mean, the garden couldn't exist right now without his help. And so, you know, him being here and passionate about trees and keeping the trees watered when I'm gone allows me to, you know, do as much traveling and client work as I do. So I'm super grateful for that. And it's, it's fun to have. You know, he's much more interested in the small trees and I'm much more interested in the big trees. And so he kind of, you know, lately I've kind of passed off most of the Shohin kind of work to him since he enjoys that much more than I do at the moment. And so he's, he's kind of holding down the fort with all the Shohin work. I'll still work on trees, those, the small trees every now and then, but he kind of keeps up with a lot of daily maintenance and, and kind of maintains that collection. So. And then most of my day to day studio work is the bigger trees in the garden.
[01:38:50] Speaker B: Solid. Very cool. Very cool.
[01:38:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:38:54] Speaker B: Awesome. Actually, I have two more. Sorry. Yeah, I'm just going to keep saying two more.
Any, anything you can share on the future Pacific Multi Expo or if you can't, that's totally fine.
[01:39:10] Speaker A: No, no, I'm very, you know, we're a nonprofit organization. We're very ideas and you know, the, the main things were we're very, very grateful for Everybody here on the west coast and all over North America and even worldwide, we. We had a crazy attendance this year. I mean, if you look at the. If you do one show, you know, you can learn a lot, but I think you really start learning when you do a second show. And, you know, it's. It really gives you a feel for the momentum of the community. You know, part of the reason that I love studying Kokofu is I think of Kokofu like the census for the Japanese Bonsai community. So when you look at all of that data year after year, you can really start to see trends. You can see the types of work that people were doing. You know, different artists kind of come into play and then leave. And I think the Expo is kind of giving us that. That data to kind of look at. And so if we look at the first Expo to the second Expo, I thought, you know, the quality of the trees were about 20% better and the displays and just everything, the show felt about 20% better overall than the first show. Not that the first show was bad, just that I think it's shown a little bit of growth in the community. So that was really exciting and rewarding.
I think the, you know, our attendance, the excitement for the Expo has definitely gone up. We had about double the attendance for the second show than we did the first show. So that's an amazing experience and kind of. It's great to see that the community appreciates all the hard work that we're kind of putting into it, and so many people are putting into it. I mean, we couldn't have the Expo without hundreds of volunteers. And so it's really rewarding to see everybody chip in and either donate financially or donate with their time or both. It's really, really rewarding. Looking forward to the third Expo. There's a few things that we're thinking about. So nothing is set in stone at this point. Other. The only thing that's set in stone is there will be a third Expo. So that's the one.
One thing that I can announce. But other than that, it's very much in flux. You know, this is the time that we're thinking about venues. So from an organizer standpoint, the standpoint that almost nobody lives, you know, the venue was very frustrating to deal with that we, we were just at. So it's hard to go back to a place of broken promises and things that didn't happen like they were supposed to, and all the baggage that kind of comes with that. But from a visitor standpoint, we only heard kind of positive things about the place. So that'll be a tough thing to kind of figure out.
Timing wise. We're looking at maybe having, you know, I think an issue between this show and the last show was it would be nice if it was a winter silhouette show for everybody, not just for us in Portland. And maybe a few people in Northern California and all of LA and mid and Southern California are kind of very much in the growing season. So I think that's one thing that we're looking at is maybe pushing it to maybe the end of January is an idea again, nothing set in stone.
[01:42:32] Speaker B: But I like that idea a lot. I very much like that.
[01:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I think, I think a lot of us like that now. With every decision that we make, there's always like it sets off a chain reaction of other things. Right. And so like, if we do it in the end of January, that makes any of our friends coming from across the Rockies their life way more difficult. Right. So if people are going to drive in from Colorado, if Bill Vavanis is going to drive over from Rochester, that makes it, you know, very treacherous travel or the potential for that.
So it gets more challenging. But I me being a deciduous enthusiast, I would love if every single deciduous tree in the room was kind of in winter silhouette or had the potential to be, because I think that's kind of important.
So those are a few ideas. Now it's another thing that we're kind of toying with is I think the Expo and all of this is just talking about the actual exhibit, which is the main part that I care about.
But I think there will always be kind of a traditional exhibit at the Expo. But something that we're interested in is having a non traditional exhibit as well. And I think the second Expo was more or less just kind of a larger version of the first Expo. And I think for the third one, we're looking, okay, how can we really flip this on its head and make it different now? You definitely have to appease the people that just want that familiar, traditional show. Right. But how do we get different artists or colleagues who are maybe less excited about that and bring them into the fold and do something a little different in a way that keeps it fresh and exciting for all of us as organizers too.
Yeah, I think the third Expo, there's a good chance that you're going to see something that you've never seen before and it's going to totally blow your mind. And we don't necessarily know what that is yet, but that's something that we're eager to conceptualize and plan.
So what do you think? What would you like to see in a third Expo?
[01:44:47] Speaker B: Well, so I would love personally and I didn't even think about the people coming from that side of the Rockies over here. Makes it more challenging for them. So my bad there. But definitely I, I really like the completely naked deciduous thing.
I, I just think I want to see trees like that. And I think a lot of the deciduous, maybe they didn't present as well as they could have if they didn't have their leaves. And so I think that that's, that's a. One thing that I would love to see.
I guess another thing, maybe just like the avant garde or unusual displays, I think that's a really cool concept. Maybe like an award specific to that, like for a unique display could encourage more of that.
[01:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Something that one of my ideas, and I'm in no way saying this is going to happen or it's going to work, but one of the concepts that I've come up with is we have an idea called Spaces. So for people who are, you know, who think in a very artistic, you know, not really confined by tradition kind of mindset, or maybe this is to professionals or I don't know, I don't know who gets to participate, but yet, but maybe you have this idea called Spaces, where, okay, I give you a 12 foot space and you do whatever you want. You bring your own backdrop, you bring your own lights, you bring your own whatever and you just fill that space in any way.
Don't fill it with just like a tree on a table, like the traditional way. But anyway, other than that. And that's an idea that, you know, I was, I was just up at Bonsai Mirai doing a podcast with Ryan and him and I had chatted about that. I was like, well, what would make coming to the Expo exciting for you? And that was one thing that he said.
So that could be a way maybe we feature different bonsai professionals. Maybe myself and Peter and Ryan and Todd and whoever get one of these 12 basis and it's, it's kind of a way to kind of just show a little bit who we are and how we can be different.
So that's one idea. Now I think the more abstract you get, the less judging can kind of take hold. Because if, if there's apples over there and oranges over here and cherries over here, then yeah, it's really hard to judge non traditional displays for sure. So, so maybe it wouldn't be A judged thing, but it could be a thing that just kind of cool and different and shows people something they've never seen before. So that, that's one of probably 20 concepts we'll come up with and we'll see what we end up working with. But that, that's been something I've been brain a lot about.
[01:47:48] Speaker B: Ah, love the idea. I think that would be really fun and really, really unique and creative and I would love to see it. So that would be a fantastic idea.
You know, one other. This is like super random, but I'm going to tell you because I know you're a musician and I think. I just think it would be really cool. It's also just another thing to do. And so I'm sure on the priority list it's right at the bottom. But one thing I think would be just absolutely awesome is if you incorporated music somehow into the pbe. Yeah, I know that's bottom of the priority, but I could envision like if you hired a cool string quartet to play classical music while you're walking around the expo, I think that could be absolutely awesome. Or at like the awards banquet, if you had like a DJ come, you could do electronic music or any kind of music. I think I really like music and I think that could be like a fun other thing, other category you could potentially do.
[01:48:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be cool. You know, I haven't thought about it in terms of the overall event. I've thought about it a lot in terms of individual displays. One of my ideas that I've had for years is like, like if you look at like a traditional Japanese tokonoma, you know, and it's telling like a landscape story or whatever, or cultural story, incorporating more of the five sense than just sight. So having sound, having feeling like the wind at your back on a tree that's cascading off a mountainside, or having smell, like incorporating more of the five senses into that experience. I've never realized that into something yet, but that's always been one of my kind of conceptual ideas.
But yeah, it'd be cool to get music overall in the venue. And that's something that I think we're kind of looking for too, is can we have a venue that's more special? You know, I think functionally wise, like the first venue was a lot less functional. It was like in the middle of nowhere. You know, parking was a little bit of an issue, but I think from an artistic side, it was a way more special venue.
And so like, I think if people with that artistic Brain really loved that first venue because it had patina. It had a lot. Most people with functional normal brains love the second venue because it was just easy to get to. There's stuff all over, so. But yeah, it'd be cool to get music in the venue somehow. I like that. I'll throw that into the mix. If you have any ideas. You could be our chief musician, musical management.
[01:50:39] Speaker B: Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, I don't know. I always love. I, I like classical music quite a bit and seeing it live, like a, like a string quartet or something, I think could just be really nice. Walking around the trees and probably only for a short period of time, maybe like a couple hours or something. It'd just be like a, a fun little side feature while enjoying the trees.
[01:51:00] Speaker A: If we had like a special event like the, the not banquet, but like the, the reception that we did on Friday night last time, I think it'd be perfect for something like that. Could even be cool to have like soft music in the background just like during the whole show. Like. Oh, for sure it's a bad analogy. But like grocery stores, how they always have like, like something a little bit.
And I think there's some psychology there of keeping people moving or something. I don't know. But it could be cool to have just like faint background music too.
[01:51:33] Speaker B: Totally, totally awesome, man. Well, I mean that's, that's a minor detail, not super important. You guys are working on all the hard, important stuff right now and I just want to say like a massive thank you to you, Jonas and Eric, because I think that you guys are doing something extremely important. And personally, I really hope that all of the bonsai community will continue to get behind it. And I think that events like this really push the community and just the overall quality of bonsai forward. So I really, really appreciate it. And thank you so much for all the hard work that you did with the last Expo and so stoked for the next one.
[01:52:15] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, that's really nice to hear. You know, something that Eric, Jonas and I all felt during the last Expos, we just had hundreds of people coming up and saying thank you. And that was just. I don't know, it was really nice because when you're doing all the hundreds of hours, or in the case of Eric and Jonas, maybe thousands of hours of work, like it, it can feel a little thankless at times when you're just, you know, doing all the dumb stuff that requires doing for a big event like that. But it, like we really did feel a gratitude when we Were there. And it's like, like you said, like, I think it's for driving overall quality for a community. I think there's nothing better than a high level show because, I mean, my. My experience going to the Artisans cup, you know, made me what I am today, made my garden what it is today. Like seeing, oh, crap, these. These are beautiful trees. I don't have anything on my bench that could get in here. Okay, I need to change. Like, okay, how do I. I need to find a better, like, find a teacher. I need to, like, make better purchases. I need to develop my skills more. Like, I need to pivot. And so I think it's having that kind of aspirational level and giving people, like a target to aim at really does drive quality, not just in bonsai, but in pots. You know, you have, you know, my, like, my friend now who's like, now just crushing it to make super great expo pots, you know, stand makers, everything. It just, you know, the overall community is just such a great stimulus for.
[01:53:44] Speaker B: A hundred percent, 100%. Cool. I'm. I'm podcasting with now later today, actually.
[01:53:51] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[01:53:52] Speaker B: Very cool. It's stoked on that.
Cool. All right, well, I guess if it's okay, I'll. I'll just hit you with one last one and then we can wrap it up.
[01:54:03] Speaker A: Sounds great.
[01:54:04] Speaker B: Kind of a deep one. And I didn't give you any chance to prepare for this, and so I don't know. This may be a bad question, but my question for you is, within Bonsai, what would you ultimately want to be remembered for someday?
[01:54:23] Speaker A: I want to be remembered for bringing the spotlight on deciduous, and I think we've done a lot of work to do that, and I think we still have a lot of work to go in that regard. But, you know, when I've been to most of the national shows and when I went to all those shows, I went to the Arsons cup, all the trees that were getting attention were the collected conifers. And those are beautiful trees, and I love them. But I was looking at the Arson's cup, for example. I was looking in this room of collected conifers. I came across this beautiful beach at the Pacific Bonsai Museum. And I was like, someone put 70 years of their life into this tree, or multiple people put the accumulation of 70 years in their life on this tree. And this tree is getting no attention. No.
No. I don't know.
It felt very overshadowed by everything else.
And I think deciduous kind of gets that rap. I mean, the word for deciduous in Japanese bonsai is called zoki, not rakuyo. So rakuyo is like the literal translation. Like if you said it to a non bonsai person, they'll understand, okay, tree that loses its leaves. But in the bonsai community, deciduous is Z, which means miscellaneous, which is another way of saying, like, it's not a pine or juniper, it's an other, like. And so.
And I think that kind of mentality has existed with deciduous trees for quite a while.
And so I think that part of the things that has me excited about the Expo is like, I feel like it's the best deciduous showing in both the first two shows that I've ever seen. In an American show, the show feels more balanced than I've ever seen in an American show. Not that it's perfect or that there's still, you know, there's still work to do, but I think bringing attention and spotlight is kind of the whole point of rakuyo is, is really putting that spotlight on deciduous trees and kind of embracing them in that way.
You know, if I, if I could have 10 different realities, you know, I would probably have lots of different types of bonsai gardens, but they would all be kind of deciduous focus in one way or another. And I think that's just kind of where my passion lies. And I think I've also resonated with a lot of people. You know, I do deciduous only intensives, and I get people who come take my intensives from all over the country that said that just say, you know, thank you. We've so many bonsai teachers are just talking about conifers. I finally found, like, you know, I found someone who's kind of talking to the things that I really care about and like. And I guess I'm just fortunate that, yeah, I can have a career in bonsai that's so focused and kind of popular. I mean, when I started doing deciduous, I didn't necessarily realize how popular it was.
I thought it was the underdog because at all the big shows it was the underdog.
But I think when you actually get out and feel what the community actually cares about, it's at least 50, 50, and. And there's a lot of deciduous love out there. So it's fun to be able to put a spotlight on that, care about that, and kind of focus my whole business and portfolio work in that context.
[01:57:38] Speaker B: Extraordinary man. Love it. And you have done a fantastic job promoting deciduous. And I'm a huge fan of everything that you've done. Like, I watch a lot of your videos, at least twice. I listen to your podcast, everything that you're doing. It's been super fun to follow along. So great work and thank you so much.
[01:57:57] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks, Jeremiah. I love your podcast, too. Thanks for having me on. It's. It's fun to be able to chat, as always. And you make amazing trees, so it's always fun chatting with you. So, yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
[01:58:09] Speaker B: Absolutely, man. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
[01:58:20] Speaker A: Sa.
