#25 Sam Tan

[00:00:00] Speaker A: To baby trees. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Bonsai. Banzai. [00:00:07] Speaker A: Banzai. Banzai. The Black Pondo Podcast. The Black Ponda Podcast. [00:00:20] Speaker B: So what, what, what got you into bonsai? [00:00:26] Speaker A: I think the medium short version of this story is some combination of just being fascinated with succulent terrariums. At first, I was just decorating the home, and I just thought it was super cool composing these succulent terrariums, right? Combination of different plants, colors, textures. At some point, I just kept looking for cooler and cooler things you could put in pots. Like, what's the most exotic cactus or succulent I can find? Like, where can I buy these rare things? Like, how do they look like? And then at the same time, I had a co worker then who had dabbled in bonsai and was kind of, you know, he. He had. He had done a bunch himself and he was like, well, oh, oh, you know what else you can put in a pot? You know what else you can do with bonsai? And I'm looking up these pictures of these crazy junipers of, like, tons of deadwood. He's like, you know, there's a technique for that if you want to create that. Or there's this and that. So he kind of really piqued my interest. And then I think this all culminated in a visit to Grove Nursery in Hayward surprise. Somewhere in 2017. That was Johnny Uchita's nursery, right? And I bought a. I was like, I'm gonna take a look. You know, maybe there's something I could take home or not. And I ended up buying a juniper. And then Howard, who was helping out that day, working there, ended up, you know, chatting me up for probably like a good 30 to 30 to 60 minutes. You know, just. I just asked him, like, so what I. What do I do after this? You know, And I prune it. Like, do I need to put it in a different pot? How does this work? And then he just dropped a lot of knowledge on me, right? And I think after that conversation, getting that tree became very obvious to me that this is a pretty deep hobby of a lot of knowledge and a lot of technique. And that just sent me down the rabbit hole. [00:02:16] Speaker B: Oh, awesome. Well, hey, Sam, I have been super impressed with the work that I've seen posted, and I feel like knowledge of bonsai and bonsai technique was really fast tracked, and you just do really good work. Like, I'm blown away by the things that I see on your Instagram and the quality of the work that I see you put out. So just wanted to give you massive props there. You Seem to have learned very quickly and a lot faster pace than I have, that's for sure. [00:02:53] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Appreciate the compliment. And well, I had good teachers and I guess I very quickly invested in learning the right, you know, we're getting the right instruction or getting like intensive instruction. I think that was something I probably did different from a lot of people. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Where's your instruction come from? [00:03:17] Speaker A: The short history of my instruction. Let's see, when I started getting into it, my first teacher, first local resource was Jonas in Bonsai Tonight. And so he was over in Alameda. I quickly got involved, took his like, workshops or like kind of his kind of open work days. Right. Where you work in his trees. I have a lot of trees, and there are a few where I brought the one or two trees I had. After that, I wanted to learn even more. And there was like a limit to how much you can learn from those kind of vocational workshops. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:51] Speaker A: And so I looked into kind of intensive studies and the person I went to is Michael Hagedorn for his seasonals. I took three of those. So those are three day workshops where you go out to Portland and you're working on trees for three days in a row. And then after that, the opportunity opened up for me. In about 2019, I had kind of three months of. Of kind of leave of absence from work. I wanted to take a little bit of a break and do something interesting. And I got a chance to intern at Bonsai Mirai with Ryan Neal. And so I lived on site for three months, mainly working on bonsai stuff, but also various kind of garden tasks. I was the garden intern then. That was in 2019. And I would say that was my most significant period of being instructed. [00:04:45] Speaker B: So. [00:04:46] Speaker A: So definitely say Ryan is my number one teacher. But there are other people before that that set me up. And then along the way to this internship too, I was watching a lot of videos on Ryan's platform, Mariah Live, which was very, very educational. And I still watch it these days to kind of brush up on knowledge or kind of fill in some gaps in my knowledge on species I'm not so familiar with. So that's. That's the short story for sure. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Well, man, you. You sure stumbled across three incredible instructors and teachers in Jonas, Michael and Ryan. I don't think you could get much better than that. So. So that's. That's fantastic that you've had those opportunities. And three months staying with Ryan Neal I think would be an incredible opportunity. So that's fantastic. [00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it was amazing. I still don't believe, like how randomly it, like I turned a chance upon the opportunity. Okay, well, it wasn't entirely random. I definitely had a desire to spend a few months of my time to get off work doing bonsai because I really wanted to learn it. I remember I'd read Michael Hagedorn's book about his apprenticeship. One of the fellow club members, one of the fellow club members in the Bonsai Society of San Francisco, he handed to me. He's like, oh, I think you love this. Check it out. Fun little read. And I was definitely charmed by this idea of intense study of craft. Right? Just like kind of dedicating yourself for a period of time, just learning hands on mastery or progression in craft. And so I was already looking for something like that. But I had never met Ryan. I was not a student at the Garden. I just hap and I, and I could never really line up a visit because Mirai had like official visiting hours. And that never lined up with the end of the seasonal workshops that I was doing at Michael Hagedorn's. And then this one time, I was visiting Randy Knight after the seasonal just to, you know, check out what he has. And by the way, Randy's a super nice guy. If you guys haven't visited Randy Knight, he's like one of the nicest guys in bonsai. And most people don't expect that, you know, because he has such a, a name and a, and a reputation for being this like legendary collector. But he's a very approachable guy. Very cool, very quirky. Anyways, I think I met him. I was, you know, he's telling me all about his collection and, you know, collecting and stuff like that. And he's like, you've seen Ryan's place, right? You've definitely been right. And I'm like, no, I've always wanted to. Could never line it up. And he's like, dude, I'll just, I'll just call him. Like, just like, I'll just call him. Don't worry about it. And he's like, oh, he's done. Yeah, just, just, just go up. It's like 10 minutes from here. Just, just drive up. And you know, I, I told him you were coming. And so that was the first time I met Ryan. First time I showed up at Mirai. And then, you know, got into a conversation. Ryan was really nice too. And yeah, I guess that went well. The, I mean, you know, he, he, he, he, he was open to, you know, me potentially coming in to intern. I mean, a few numerous follow up Conversations happened after that, but it just happened. The door just opened, and I'm very grateful that it did. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Fabulous. And would you elaborate a little bit more about your time at Ryan's during those three months? What did that look like? [00:08:19] Speaker A: Let's see, what did that look like? So I think the deal was I was an intern, so not like a. Not an apprentice, because that's a very kind of specific thing they do in Japan. It's like many years and stuff. So I don't think any of us wanted to call this arrangement that. But I was, you know, he gave me a combination on site. I guess I could choose my hours. I basically was, you know, Monday to Friday, like most of the work day, as much as you want. I work on stuff. And I guess I was mainly working on bonsai and helping out guard and stuff. So I guess in exchange for my labor, I got kind of accommodation and I guess, instruction and the opportunity to work on all the stuff. So that was pretty much it for the most part. I was working on trees, wiring, pruning trees. This was. This was from July to October, I think we had discussed. Well, I said I really wanted to learn how to style and wire trees, like how to make trees. And I was most interested in junipers. That was what I brought up. And he said, well, the best time to do. To kind of come by then would be late summer, early fall. So this ended up being a July to October thing. I was mostly doing that. And then whenever there's stuff that, you know, needed doing in the garden, I was there lending a hand as well. So various things. Like, I remember helping the poor concrete this one time. I'd never done it before. I think none of us had. But for one of the installations in the garden, and, you know, there's just a bunch of us. It was kind of like kind of starting to rain, and we're all just, like, figuring out how to, you know, how to set this concrete. And we're holding up this installation, you know, one of those structures that Ryan had built for his Portland Japanese garden installation. And so various fun but tiring kind of bits of manual labor did some of that too. So for sure, that's basic. That was basically my time there. [00:10:24] Speaker B: Gotcha. Did you get that experience in with junipers? I would imagine. Did you put a lot of. A lot of wire on junipers? [00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say count how many trees I wired when I was there. Obviously, I was much slower when I was kind of at that stage of my bonsai journey. But I would say I mostly wired junipers, and I got basically to touch almost. Almost all the native species and I think, you know, you know, one or two, like, kind of exotic species, right? Like. Like Chinese junipers of different sorts. Also a bunch of other native species too, like redwood, ponderosa pine. So I had really good. It was a really good spread of, like, different varieties of trees. I think maybe one of the best parts about turning in his garden was that, you know, Ryan has one of the most extensive collections of kind of US native trees, right. So to be able to touch those trees, a variety of them and a bunch of them in kind of different stages of development, that was really educational. Also, when I was there, I mean, typically what Ryan had me do, these were like, you know, second to fourth wirings of the tree, right? So the tree. These were completely raw. Ryan would bring the tree in, or I'll bring the tree and maybe. And then he would set the structural wire in it, right? And then he would typically set an example pad, an example branch, usually defining branch, and it'd be like, well, here's how it's set up. Here's the example pad. Wire out the whole tree and make everything else kind of like this pad. [00:12:00] Speaker B: Nice. [00:12:01] Speaker A: That was. Yeah, that was the majority of what I was set up with during that three months subsequent visits, you know. You know, I've gotten a lot more autonomy to kind of do it, do the whole tree from. From. From scratch. But that was a good way to start me off, for sure. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Oh, that seems like a great way to learn. That's fantastic. And are you still studying with Ryan or what's your bonsai education look like these days? And I know you're doing a lot of client work and. And kind of have a semi pro thing going on, but are you still studying with Ryan? [00:12:36] Speaker A: You know, in the years after I. After that internship, I've tried to go back to help, you know, once or twice I could, you know, so where there's availability, just want, you know, since I was kind of ramped up on. On. On kind of some of Brian's techniques and how he liked to work his trees, right. So I finally became useful, and so I got to go back a bunch of times, you know, for maybe like a week, one to two weeks, and I'll just be there, like, working on trees. And, you know, a lot of people do this with. With the professionals they've learned from or work with, right. So I did that a bunch of times. Then I think things got really busy in Mariah, and it was harder to find time that like kind of lined up with Ryan's schedule and my schedule. So I haven't been to Mariah in like two, maybe over two years now. I mean, I've kind of visited but not worked on anything. And this coming year though, the Ryan's starting a new, like a new program for advanced students. Calls it the Master Studio. So I'm going, I'm going in April for one of those. So that should be fun. But it's been a while. [00:13:39] Speaker B: Oh really? [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's been a while since I've gone to get formal instruction from Ryan, which kind of ties. It kind of brings me to like, you brought up the client work I take on. So these days I take on some client work. I work in my own trees and people pay me to work on their trees as well. And I also help out a bit at the garden at Lake Merritt or some of their older trees. And you know, a lot of this, I mean, I do this on the side and it's not my main source of income. But one way I thought about it was that, you know, if I'm going to get better, I'm going to keep getting better. I need more and more reps, you know, and I need like exposure to more material outside of my own collection. Right. In the first few years after my internship, I spent, I wanted to keep getting better and so I spent some time acquiring material where I could do all the first stylings and kind of take the risk on that, you know, someone with a valuable collection, you know, would reasonably not want to allow me to take the risk on. Right. Like I never did a first raw styling at Mirai because, you know, why would you trust me to do that? You know, a guy three years into bonsai. Right. So I had to do that all on my own material. So spent a bunch of time doing that. At some point I could only house that material, house that much material in my home in San Francisco. So taken on client work kind of allowed me to work on even more things. So that's been quite productive, albeit a lot of work. Yeah, for sure it is tricky having a full time job and doing some wire for hire, but so far it's been well worth it. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Nice. Very cool. Are you open to accepting client work right now or is that something you're not looking. Looking for? [00:15:30] Speaker A: You know, I think my bonsai skills have improved Where I need and, and there's still a lot of room for improvement. Some, some somewhere else I really need to improve on is gauging my capacity and how much I can take on. There's definitely been seasons and this is one of those busy seasons where I'm like, yes. You know, people are like, oh, why are this free for me? Actually, these two more. Yes, yes, yes. And then I have these, I have this like queue lined up in my place and I'm like, oh my goodness. Like this tree is like, this is definitely like a six to eight hour tree. And then there's like, you know, and that time doesn't just kind of, you know, you can't create that time out of nowhere. You know, it's going to come out of your weekday nights or you sacrifice your weekends. And so that was a very long way of saying kind of yes, but it depends on what's in the queue and like how it fits in with my goals. So selectively. Yes. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Got it, got it. Makes sense, makes sense. Awesome. If anyone is, is interested, should have started with this in the beginning, but what's your Instagram account? Or what's the best ways to get a hold of you, Sam, or, or follow you? [00:16:34] Speaker A: Oh, right now I, I just have my whole portfolio, whatever, up on Instagram. Instagram, that's Sam Tan Bonsai S A M T A N Bonsai B O N B O N S A I look up that account. Instagram, you can message me. That's the best way of contacting contact me right now. I should probably start a website at some point, you know, so I can just have an email. But yeah, right now that's the best way. [00:17:02] Speaker B: Sweet. So what is it about natives? Why are you so into natives? And this is a funny topic because I feel like it's kind of split in the US Bonsai community. Seems like half the people are really gung ho about us natives and then other people are not. And they say, oh, it's just like a political boundary kind of thing. And there's all these other Asian species that they've used for so long. Where do you kind of lean and orient when it comes to that argument? And well, I guess I just answered that. Or I know where, where, where you lean. But what, what's your thought on natives and why are you so interested in natives? [00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, you spoiled it. I'm pretty into natives and you know, all these like little bios people ask me to send, send them for like club demonstrations and stuff. Like, I do explicitly say that I do enjoy, really enjoy working with natives. Why? There are a few reasons, I think, fundamentally what drew me, like, one of the things I find attractive of the art form the art form that is bonsai, I mean it's kind of Japanese, but it's a lot about kind of context and place, right. Like if you just think about all the various aspects of display and all the, you know, kind of the intentionality that is put into setting a scene, right. Or setting a season, a place and so on. And I just feel like the, your geographic proximity to the native range of a particular tree is interesting. It's contextually interesting. And obviously I don't live in the Sierras or in the Rockies or actually that close to this many. All these species I like to work with. But definitely moving to California after college and discovering to wonders of California and discovering the wonders of like these crazy trees in the mountains and crazy trees in the coast. In fact, Monterey cypress was probably one of the first trees I was kind of obsessed about before even bonsai. Right. It's just so. They're so obviously interesting, you know, and like unlike anything I've ever seen anywhere else. The way that like being able to express some of that awe and kind of my relationship with these trees that I've discovered here in the art form of bonsai is something I just find attractive, interesting. So that's like kind of the kind of, the kind of the art kind of artistic or kind of kind of philosophical part of it, I think something else. There are a few other reasons in terms of working with natives too. I'm typically thinking of working with collected trees, right? Yamadori and I like working with Yamadori. And then being in the US the only collected trees you're going to get are native collected trees because you can't really easily import them because of import restrictions and so on. I think it's more that I really like working on and making collected trees that just becomes natives. Mainly because I think this kind of the process of making a bonsai out of a collected tree, you know, it's kind of different than like growing like, like a field grown tree or even growing a tree from scratch. Right. I like, I like the like the creative constraint of like a found object, right. It has, you know, has this, these things you like about it. But there are a whole bunch of things you don't like about it. There are a whole bunch of trade offs and technical things you might have to do to find the best solution there. And that whole process I find extremely challenging and interesting. And I only really get that with collected trees. Right. I don't think I could. You know, people have asked me before why I don't spend time Growing. And I don't. I just don't think I could be as creative as nature. I could make myself do the weird things to these collected trees that nature does. Like, if I were to grow them myself. Right. I would never do it. And I would end up making these kind of very predictable trees because, like, I don't think I'm the most creative guy when it comes to, like, making something from scratch. Right. So little nudge I get from nature when I work with a collected piece of material is also kind of an interesting kind of creative constraint. Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:36] Speaker B: I feel like Mother Nature is truly the best bonsai artist and, you know, the best carver of deadwood, the best anything. When it comes to bonsai, it's all Mother Nature is the best. We are ultimately just emulating Mother Nature and trying to replicate to the best of our ability, and it never turns out quite as good. Some people get really close, but, like, Mother Nature just crushes all of us and is way better than we could ever expect. So I. I get that there. [00:22:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think so. And again, nothing against the kind of the process of growing a tree. Right. And making kind of classical, idealized trees, but I just enjoy the process and the creative challenges that come with collective material quite a bit more. And this probably has to do with me having learned from Ryan. Ryan a bunch of that kind of liking, that kind of probably rubbed off of me having worked on so many of those trees. Something else I like is the challenge of learning how to refine these trees. It's exciting. I feel like where the scene is now, the community is now. I think there's a lot more knowledge in experimentation or the results of experimentation on refining or building native species knowledge and kind of results we, the community, didn't have probably a decade ago or more. Right. And so I find it exciting to kind of, kind of be part of a movement of people who are trying to learn how to get the best out of these species. Right. And you have to imagine this happened at some point in Japan, too, you know, for sure. I mean, all the. All the Japanese, you know, the established species for bonsai in Japan, like, had to be, because they were working with what they had, right. That, you know, all those are their native species. And earlier generations of bonsai people there probably spent a whole bunch of time figuring out which are the best and most interesting species cultivars, what techniques, and so on. And so it's like being on the frontier of figuring out new techniques for new species is, like, just exciting, you know, Nice. So I'm still very kind of fascinated by that. And, like, I'm experimenting with. With different approaches, different techniques, and, like, seeing what I can achieve, you know, whether some of my theories or kind of approaches are going to kind of work out is. Is. Is. Is fascinating to me. That being said, there's something attractive about working with a very predictable species that does exactly what you want, like a Japanese black pine. Like, you de candle it, like you read the signs, you do it the right time, like it's going to respond exactly how you want. And there is something very attractive about that because you can kind of develop predictable results in a good amount of time. And they just are very frustrating sometimes, and they don't behave the way you think they are going to because of a whole variety of reasons. But I like the challenge. Yeah. And I was going to say the one more. The one more thing I. The one more thing I really like. Well, the one more thing I want to talk about here is that I also enjoy keeping a lot of my native trees on their native foliage, particularly junipers. I think people are mostly, like, talking about grafting junipers. I can't grow most of the native pines in San Francisco, unfortunately, so I don't have that much to say about pines. Like, if I ever wanted to ponderosa pine, I'll probably have to graft it with black pine, but I haven't kind of gone out of my way to do that yet. But with native junipers, again, like, there's one. The challenge of refining the foliage, it's definitely harder. There is a reason why the various kinds of Chinese juniper are so popular in bonsai. They kind of bonsai themselves. They build woody tissue, like, pretty early, and they get dense pretty fast. But again, just like the challenge and also the kind of the. The context, right. The place that comes from saying this, this is a. This is a Sierra juniper, like, collected from this part of the Sierras that has this kind of, like, subspecies of foliage. It smells a certain way, it looks a certain way, and it's kind of different from the next Sierra juniper, but which is different from the Rocky Mountain juniper. And it's different from the other Rocky Mountain juniper over there, which is from another subspecies. I like that. It's just. It's just a fascinating story and kind of a interesting challenge. So that's my long take on this. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. The juniper grafting is an interesting one. I kind of have started to graft more and more of my junipers. However, I still want to keep A couple native, if they have good foliage quality. But I look at a number of factors, you know, like size of tree, how is the native foliage quality, does it have pollen sacs, things like that. And then I try and like rate the quality of the full of the native foliage and if it's, you know, above a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, then I'm more likely to, to keep it. If it's below, then I'm like, maybe I should graft it. But I do enjoy the native foliage and I totally get what you're saying about that. And I like, I like, definitely like keeping some of mine native. [00:27:03] Speaker A: So you brought up pollen sacks. What's, what's that? What does that predict in your experience? [00:27:10] Speaker B: Oh, just so certain trees, they'll have pollen sacs. I'm not sure if it's a male, female thing or what the deal is exactly, but it's like these yellow little flower looking things. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Sure. [00:27:25] Speaker B: On some of the foliage and they just don't look quite right to me. They don't look all that pretty or attractive in my opinion. So. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Got it. [00:27:34] Speaker B: I'm not sure if I'm using this the correct terminology. Let's see. [00:27:38] Speaker A: I think it is pollen. You're talking about junipers, the yellow sacks. I think that's what I think that's. Male trees produce that, those pollen sacks? Yeah. Yes. [00:27:51] Speaker B: So whatever. They are not a huge fan of them. And it's hard because it seems from my experience not every juniper will have them every year. So like I'll collect a Sierra and it will be fine for like three years and then on the fourth year it just grows all these pollen sacs and they're not the, the most, the ugliest thing in the world, but they're not the most attractive thing in the world either. So if I do see those, typically it's a, it's a negative and it will to me, it lowers the, the mark on the, the sliding scale of quality. So I usually graft anything that has pollen sacks. That's just my personal thing. Yeah. [00:28:34] Speaker A: I've never heard someone not liking the appearance of the pollen sacks. Not saying they're super attractive or anything. That's the first time I've heard that. One thing I have heard, at least for California junipers, I've heard that female trees tend to have tighter foliage. And so you're not, you not liking the pollen. The appearance of pollen sacs might have a correlation if that's true. And female foliage is indeed tighter. And I guess you tell the Female trees from those that like, those that produce berries. You would think then that the ones in pollen probably have coarser foliage, which could be another reason why you don't. [00:29:09] Speaker B: Like them for sure. Totally. Yep. [00:29:14] Speaker A: I actually haven't like. I haven't grafted much at all. But I have to then imagine that the grafting stock never has pollen cones on it. That typically does not produce pollen. [00:29:27] Speaker B: You mean like if you graft Itoagawa or Kishu on it, does a scion or a perch graft? [00:29:33] Speaker A: I guess the sea, you know, the whips that people propagate, those have to be the female or like the non pollen producing like plants. Right. I actually haven't seen. I don't think I've seen it. And Itoigawa or Kishu produce pollen and I kind of want to be nice maybe because we've selectively propagate at the ones that don't produce them. Right? [00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not, not 100 sure. I don't think I've seen it either. I know some I've seen like Kishu get berries before, but I think that's a different thing. I should know this. Do all junipers get berries or do just some? Like, is it that just a male or a female thing? These are. [00:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I've always assumed that it's just female, but I. I wouldn't be surprised if. Wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if like the trees are a bit flexible in that. We'll. We'll check. We'll check these facts after the podcast. This is totally interesting. You're right. I've never seen. I've never seen like grafted trees produce pollen. Maybe just berries. And even then, like, I don't even see it that often. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I've definitely removed berries off of a Kishu grafted Kishu before. So I know that berries are a thing. But. Yeah. And then what do you think about grafting native junipers onto native junipers? Do you like that idea? I've never seen it done, but I've heard it talked about before. [00:31:02] Speaker A: I also have heard it talked about and I have been asked about this before because I have one of these Rocky Mountain junipers in my backyard that has a particularly good foliage. It's very tight, it's very turgid. Stands up on its own. You've probably seen that tree at Peter's was boarding there. This like really long, like cascading tree. That. That thing's rocky. It's very green. It's like, it's Very tight. Downside is that the wood is very brittle. And I've heard this is one of the kind of subspecies of Rockies that like, Ryan has seen a bunch of. It's a kind of like, oh, you got good foliage, but it's, it's a bit. It's a bit more fragile, a bit more brittle. Yeah. People have asked me, like, maybe you should propagate this. And then you grafted on Rockies and then you still have rocky, but, you know, like the good Rocky. And I attempted, I thought about it, but I don't know. I think the moment you're changing the foliage, like, for me, like, you lose that story of like, this is the tree found as is like growing the way it was, like where it was grown. Right. And so I don't find that appealing. If I was gonna graph, then maybe I would just graph like the best possible foliage ever. Right. Like, maybe I'll just graft Ito Gawa. That has the tightness, but also like all the, even all the other better things, right. That, that you get with Ito Igawa. So I haven't found that. That attractive yet. I have also, you know, gone suggestions, you know, for one or two of my trees where, like, if I wanted to compact the tree, I could graph the tree on itself. The. The CR juniper I put in the Pacific Bonsai Expo. The most recent one has kind of an awkward low branch that, like, where a line could maybe be corrected if I, if I put a scion in there, a scion graph. I've thought about it, but like, maybe that's the most attractive option to me. But even then I don't love it because, like, I don't love the idea of grafting to change the structure of the tree. And I know this is a common practice and it's done in Japan, it's done here. But like, like, I. I'm sure there are ways you can do it really well and like, we totally disguise the graph. Right? But. But if you're making, if you're. If. If you have a primary branch that has pretty established structure going up, and then you graft in the kind of you, you graft in a certain spot to, to continue the line downwards, say, like, I think it's going to take quite a while for that union to naturalize. Right. And I'm not quite sure in the long term if it will fully disappear. And this particular tree I'm talking about is kind of like a long, elegant tree where you see a lot of the line. Right. So I don't know if that's going to work out very well if you can. Graph union is going to be visible in the design of the tree for a long time. I don't know. This is me maybe coming up with reasons not to graph because I'm lazy. This could be it but I'm hesitant. How about you? Have you graphed the natives on natives? [00:34:12] Speaker B: No, I have not. And part of that. So I would be into that. Like if I could find the 10 out of 10 Sierra Juniper, I would be interested in grafting that onto some of the Sierra trunks that I have collected. Possibly like I still really like Itoagawa and Kishu as options. And then also the other one I've been grafting is Fudo. At least that's like the common name and it's like a bluer. It's a bluer. It looks like Kishu but it's bluer. But anyways I totally be down. If I could find a really good quality Sierra juniper I would be down to grafted. One thing that I have found is that it's incredibly hard to get juniper Sierra junipers to. To root from cutting. [00:35:04] Speaker A: Oh. [00:35:04] Speaker B: So yeah, I don't know. And then I'm not sure if scion grafting would work but it seems like so far I. I've taken a bunch of Sierra juniper cuttings because I was like I just want to see if they'll take and it was very challenging. I know Eric told me he had challenging. He had some, some challenges taking Sierra cuttings as well. So I'm not sure if. If how you would go about that. I'm sure there's a way. I'm not very skilled when it comes to propagation so you know, I just can take a million Kishu cuttings though. And Sierra is more challenging. I've heard Rocky Mountains also hard to take from cutting but I'm not 100% sure. [00:35:48] Speaker A: I imagine the way you would do it if it was hardly propagate from cutting. I'm not an expert either but could probably just air layer. Right. A bunch of stuff. I imagine that would be probably a bit easier. Well. [00:36:04] Speaker B: So I know that California juniper air layers well. I don't think that Sierra air layers all that well but. But I'm not sure. You know, I haven't done a bunch. I've. I've definitely seen California air layered before successfully. I' not seen a Sierra air layered successfully and I'm not sure about Rocky Mountain. So. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Huh. If I were to try it, I'll probably find. I mean obviously we're talking about Young, smaller whips. Right. Not like, not the whole trunk, not, not, not the trunk of an old tree, but like part of a branch. And I'd probably try to air layer where there's like foliage underneath the air below the air layer as well. Right. I think that would probably increase chance of success for sure. But yeah, I haven't actually tried. It's a good, maybe I'll try it out next time when I prune that tree. [00:36:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:56] Speaker A: More than one person has asked me about the foliage in that tree. So maybe I'll make a killing off a bunch of cuttings. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Very nice. Yeah, I would love if you air layer it that Rocky Mountain juniper. I'd love to see the results of that. That'd be fantastic. Also saw interesting thing that Bjorn posted the other day. He was saying that rooting hormone can help increase your chances of a scion graft, which I had never heard before. And I thought that was just kind of a cool, a cool point there. So it makes sense to me because essentially rooting hormone just helps increase callous tissue and essentially with a scion graph you're trying to get that callus tissue to form, form very quick, quickly and bond to the native stock. So I, I thought that was kind of cool. Haven't experimented with that. I think I will in the future though. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. I, I, I haven't, I haven't either. And, and I, I, I wonder too, maybe next time I'll think about it when I graph. I guess my one concern about getting overly aggressive like encouraging more callous tissues that you might like maybe push like the graph out of, out of alignment. Right. I know you want to get the cambiums to kind of line up and so you know, you would think that maybe the, the plant being grafted has probably can produce callus a lot more kind of vigorously than, than the scion. Right. And, and how does that like affect the position of the, the alignment of the cambial layers? That would be my concern. But yeah, yeah. So Sierra, this one year I experimented with, when I was kind of doing some live vein work. Right. And reducing the live vein, I applied one of these cut pastes that has a more rooting growth hormone whatever in there. Right on the margin. The new margin I created thinking would help it callous over faster and you know you get a more attractive role. Dude, Sierras are super, super vigorous like they are. They put on tissue so fast they get, the veins get so fat. And I totally regret the decision because that entire kind of margin like callous in kind of a grotesque way. You know, it's just too much, too much callous. So I don't think Sierra's need a lot of help with callous. Like they're gonna do it themselves so. [00:39:23] Speaker B: Totally. [00:39:24] Speaker A: I. I was wondering this. Don't do it. It's like a bad idea. You might even close any, you might even close any kind of gaps that you created in doing live vein work if you encourage too much callousing. Because those. Yeah, those things are crazy. [00:39:38] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I even wonder if you scion graft Sierra and you use rooting hormone, would it just make like a grotesque bump of vascular tissue because it's just going too crazy, going too hard in the paint, forming that callus, you know, like maybe that's why we don't use rooting hormone when for scion grafting. I think it's done in the, the nursery industry to some degree. I'm not sure exactly, but that's where like the studies were done that Bjorn posted. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Interesting. Fascinating. Yeah. Well, thanks for the tip. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Yeah, cool man. What are your. Do you have some favorite species for or native species for bonsai? Like what would you say maybe your top three are? [00:40:31] Speaker A: Huh? It's a good question. You know, I work with a lot of cypresses. I work with a lot of pygmy cypresses and once in a while Monterey cypresses. If in terms of like the story, like the romance of like my connection with the tree, like I like cypresses the most because I live in San Francisco and the Monterey cypress is the iconic tree of like kind of San Francisco Bay Area NorCal. Right. But I don't one you it's. There's very few. You can't really collect Monterey cypresses. There are many examples of kind of old collected or grown Monterey cypresses. So that's hard to access. So I usually work with pygmy cypresses, which are kind of like a cousin similar or maybe even the same species grown in like a kind of collected from a different environment. Right. But those while interesting. The ones collected by Bob Schiman or kind of anyone I've seen collect them. But kind of they're all kind of long, elegant trees. Right. Like I guess what I'm saying is that with the material I've access to there is kind of limited variety of form and so why I love them. I wish I could work with more different kinds of pygmy cypress. I want thick, chunky ones and big long, whimsical ones. But they're always just long and just different kinds of lines that you get to work with. So I like pygmy cypresses, but actually, my. You know where my heart really is when it comes to, like, working on trees. I love junipers. I still love junipers. So I don't have as many junipers proportionate to my love for working on junipers. Among the native junipers, I probably like Sierra juniper, the best one. It's kind of closer to where I live, right. There's. There's, like, I actually see them in the wild and these things, bonsai themselves, they're giant natural bonsai, also with the really coarse growth habit. Like, when you work them and you style them, you can actually get a finished appearance much earlier because of how the foliage is coarse. It fills a lot of space, and it kind of stands up on its own actually quite a bit. And so it's kind of very satisfying if you. If your technique is good, right. And you're able to kind of spread that coarse foliage in the right way to, you know, form pads. Pads and fill spaces. You can actually see results pretty quickly, which I like. And obviously they have, like, a really attractive kind of bluish foliage, most of them. And also the live vein, when you. When you sand, it sands the very even red color. So it's a very, like, loud and bold tree. When you see, it's like, blue, like, blue and then, like, deep red. And, like, it's so vigorous and, like, it's coarse. So I like. I like Sierra junipers the most. I think a close second would be Rocky Mountain juniper, which is kind of opposite. Super fine foliage, typically pretty brittle wood. The best deadwood in the business. Right. Like, they have such fine tissue. [00:43:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:43:48] Speaker A: And so, like, the striations in the deadwood are always, like, super interesting. Tons of variety of forms. You. You have fat, chunky ones. You have long ones. And the foliage, while typically challenging the handle, I guess it really rewards you if you, you know, you. You're detail oriented and you have the technique to present that foliage well. Like, it really. It's really technically demanding to fully detail wire Rocky Mountain juniper. And I. I guess the. Maybe I'm a masochist, but, like, I enjoy that challenge, and I enjoy reaping the rewards of that effort. [00:44:25] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I'm right there with you with Sierra juniper. I think that's my favorite. Although for me, I think it's just. I'm biased. I've just been around it, and I love spending time up in the Sierra. That's like my. My spot up there. I haven't Spent a whole lot of time in the Rocky Mountains. So maybe it's just a bias or whatever, but I, I. Sierra isn't my number one. So we're saying. [00:44:48] Speaker A: And you've collected a lot of these trees, right? So. So you, you. [00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:44:52] Speaker A: You've farmed the table, you know. [00:44:55] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Farm the table for sure. Yep. [00:44:59] Speaker A: You know, something that I've always found interesting about Sierras, maybe I want to ask you this since, you know, you collect them and you've probably seen a lot more examples of raw material in the mountains. I find that the deadwood, typically, in the. The samples you get for the collective specimens you get from Bonsai, the deadwood seems to be younger, and the deadwood seems. And then say, compared to Rocky Mountain juniper, even California juniper, you get. And the deadwood seems to have a very different character to it. Like, the, A lot of the age in the deadwood seems to present itself in, like, the kind of, like, checkered pattern. Right. Versus kind of the fine parallel lines you see on, like, California Rocky Mountain juniper deadwood. That's one. And you also get, like, the live vein deadwood margins are also a lot, like quite a. Quite a bit different. Like with the Rockies especially, you get very HD boundaries. Right. Like very parallel lines. Whereas with the Sierras and the Westerns, the live vein can kind of smudge over the deadwood. Like, it recedes in a really weird way. Right. Smudging is like the best way I can describe it. It's like, it's not a clean line. It's like a wavy kind of line. And sometimes it, like, it moves in ways you don't expect. And so that's something that's weird about Sierra junipers that I kind of like. That's kind of charming, I guess. But I do wish, like, I do wonder if there are specimens with that, like, that same kind of HD deadwood, you know, high def, like deadwood that you see on. On Rocky Mountain. Have you seen that? Is that your experience at all with kind of Sierra specimens? [00:46:44] Speaker B: I've definitely seen the smudging effect that you're talking about. And then I'm not sure, like, I would love to see some examples of what you mean when you're talking about, like, the HD Rocky Mountain juniper deadwood. I mean, I definitely see a lot of interesting texture with Sierra juniper, and I think that's like, a very desirable characteristic. I also think with our native junipers, there are certain characteristics. Say, for example, like, I call one spike gin. And it's just kind of like this Ebo gin type feature where it's like these spikes. And I think that it was formed because there was a bunch of, there was a whirl where essentially a bunch of different branches grew out of one small location and then those all died off. So it's a bunch of little gins all very close together. I call it spike gin. I do think that as time goes on within American bonsai, we're going to identify those unique features of the specific types of junipers. And I think that we should name them just to make it easier for quick reference and to have better and more in depth discussions about these things. I'm not saying we should use Spike Jim. I don't think that's the best name, but just I like the idea of naming certain types of gin that we see. I've heard some other people say like, oh, there's like scale gin here and I agree with that. I think we should like have some kind of universal naming convention. I think that would just be cool. So I don't know if I answered your question there, but. [00:48:26] Speaker A: No, it makes sense. And I realize now that calling the Deadwood HD doesn't really. It's not very descriptive, I guess. I guess what I don't see on Sierra junipers is kind of like really like fine live veins, like wrapping around deadwood in kind of this really intricate way that you might see of some other species. Or like you look, look at the old collected junipers in Japan, right? Like, like you'd see like a primary branch of like a barber pole gin. Barber pole live vein around deadwood. You don't really see that in Sierras. And I think because it's. Because the Sierra, the Sierra Lipane is kind of fat. It's like, it's plump, right. And you never get those proportions in Sierras and I think that's just what, just what they are. They're of course. [00:49:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:49:18] Speaker A: Vigorous species. [00:49:19] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. I completely agree with you there. And also just finding really good twist and curve in Sierra is more challenging. It at least it seems to me compared with Rocky Mountain junipers. It's definitely out there. Like I've definitely seen some Sierras that have some really awesome dead live interaction. Really cool twists, curves, spirals. I have a couple of them that have some of that going on but it's less common it seems at least to me compared with the Rocky Mountain junipers. And I'm not sure what's going on if that's all genetic or it's more environmental factors don't know there exactly. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Well, you have some very impressive Sierra junipers. I'm pretty jealous. I can't wait to see some of these. These projects of yours, you know, show us the time because. Yeah, you have sent some crazy junipers. [00:50:17] Speaker B: Ah, appreciate it. Appreciate it. Hey, you know, I am in love with your pygmy cypress forest on. It's kind of like on a slant on the. On the stone. [00:50:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:50:32] Speaker B: You posted an update on it recently. And I just. Just wanted to say, like, that that tree is. Is quite stunning and very beautiful and so great work on that. I was curious, what kind of stone is that on? [00:50:45] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. That is on a piece of lace rock that I got from a stone yard in Portland. Actually, when I was on my internship, I kind of gone with Ryan. He was shopping for. To the stone yard. He was it called Rockyard. Rockyard stone yard. And she was shopping for stones. And I just picked this up on the side. I thought it was an interesting piece of stone. That composition very much inspired by Ryan's pygmy cypress composition, which is much bigger, pointing the other way, but, like, much bigger and impossible to lift as one person. And I came back from the internship thinking, I want to make basically this composition, but, like, in a size that I can kind of carry. What I ended up making, I can barely carry, but I can carry it. You know, it's still kind of big. [00:51:31] Speaker B: Nice. [00:51:33] Speaker A: And, yeah, it took a lot of engineering. I think one day I'll post pictures of the whole process. But Eric Schrader from San Francisco, he helped me a lot. I wanted to stand the lace rock up at an angle to create the impression of a cliff. And so what we ended up doing, after some brainstorming, is kind of drill two holes underneath, you know, on one end of the lace rock. And basically epoxy in a bunch of bent rebar. Two bent pieces of rebar into those holes. And so we created a kickstand for this to stand this thing up at a diagonal angle. And then I cast an epoxy base around the kickstand so I could more easily plant it in a pot. And so that whole thing was kind of set up. That lace rock was lying down on its side when I got it. And then I put four trees on it. And this was when I was less experienced. So there, I think, over. Over the. Over time, like, two trees didn't quite make it. And then I had to replace the trees. Awful, by the way, like, having to tear apart your composition and, like, patch trees in, but there's actually four pygmy cypresses on there, and one of them is a dual trunk. So I have five trunks, four trees and five trunks. So that dual trunk is really, really awesome because there's less root ball yet to deal with, and there's a whole bunch of, like, scaffolding on the back I have to build out so that, you know, one of the trees in the back wouldn't be just floating. And, like, it's hard to attach a tree on the side of a rock that small. And so, yeah, a lot. A lot went into that. The care is. And the watering is pretty intense, but it's finally kind of maturing. All the trees on that composition, two are planted on that rock straight out of the collection container. So I know a lot of people say you gotta be careful with pygmy cypresses. They. They don't like big repots. You can definitely do it, but you need to put a lot of. You need to be very careful of the roots, and you also need to do whatever you need to do to stabilize the tree in its position. I think where I experienced failure before is I was only. I was tying the tree against the rock just by its roots, but because of how. How slanted that rock is and how little soil I had to leave on the tree. Right. To get the esthetic I wanted. Like, I needed external supports to prop the trunk at that angle to give time, give the roots time to grow into that position. Right. And so in the latest picture, you probably saw some scaffolding, like, pinching this one tree into position. Like, that was the most tricky part of the rock to mount a tree. And I took no chances of this tree because if it. If it died, I would be. I would have been so sad because I don't want to replace another tree on that composition again. [00:54:14] Speaker B: It's a lot of work, for sure. Well, hey, you crushed it. It is just so awe inspiring. I love, love that composition and the. The vertical nature of the stone. The angle that you chose really upped the level of quality with that composition. So fantastic job there. Do you use the sphagnum instead of muck, like. Like I believe Ryan does? [00:54:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I use Ryan's technique of doing the sphagnum and octodom. It's. It's very. It's very labor intensive, especially when you're dealing with an almost vertical composition. Right. To get. Yeah, because we eat the stag them in there and have it stay. But it's totally worth. It's Totally worth it. It's totally worked. It takes a whole bunch of time. I tried Michael Hagedorn's and the first iteration of that planting. I, I tried that kind of muck mix that you. Where he uses cornstarch, sphagnum, and akadama dust. It didn't work quite as well for me as I was hoping it would. And also, and I, I probably didn't mix the right ratios, or I probably wasn't using it exactly right. But over time, too, like, I found that, you know, I've heard, I've heard this about muck. You have to replace the muck at some point anyway, because it kind of ends up caking up, you know, getting really hydrophobic and so on. Like, later iterations, when I planted the other trees on it, I used pure sphagnum and, you know, with, with Akadama kind of pushed into it took like, three times, you know, the amount of work, but the trees definitely recovered faster, and it's, it sets over time. [00:55:59] Speaker B: Very nice. Very nice. Love it. I guess, kind of changing gears here. You, you have some furniture in your house, or at least one piece of furniture made by Austin Heitzman. [00:56:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I, It's a bench that sits in the corner, kind of a oddly shaped corner. And I decided to get Austin to make me a bench so I could fully utilize that kind of angle in that corner instead of wasting this corner. I think I told you about it because I think it came from, like, a similar, the lumber came from a similar tree that the stand that your redwood at the recent expo was sitting on, like, it was kind of a similar piece of lumber. So, like, I recognized some of the grain and the purplish color on the stand there. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's the same one. And Austin had told me, I think before, I think when he was showing me samples for the slab, he's like, oh, here's another work in progress stand that, like, is kind of from the, from the same tree. And I, I, I remember thinking that that stand was pretty awesome. So it was cool to see in person. [00:57:03] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, I, I just am such a big fan of Austin's work. His stuff so incredible. And in general, I really seem to like walnut a lot, which is, I believe what your, your furniture is, is made out of in my stand. It's walnut, right? [00:57:21] Speaker A: It is. It is walnut. Yeah. Well, nice. Well, that's pretty awesome. [00:57:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:25] Speaker A: You and I are not the only two people who love walnut. It's. [00:57:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:57:30] Speaker A: Beautiful, beloved species. [00:57:33] Speaker B: Did you see Austin getting some sizable manzanita recently? [00:57:39] Speaker A: Oh, I saw that. Yeah. Yeah, I saw. I saw. I saw you posted on Instagram and, like, I think Eric had some property that had manzanita that needed to be cleared. That's exciting. I haven't. I haven't seen big pieces of, like, manzanita anything. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Yes, no, me neither. I. That. That's one species that I love just in general. I put it in my bonsai garden just as landscape plantings. But I absolutely love manzanita. I wish I could grow them for bonsai, but I think furniture would be absolutely incredible. And I don't know anybody else that is using manzanita lumber, which. It's. It's just awesome that he was able to get that. But I'm. I'm really excited to see that as I love the color of the wood and the. The grain of the wood looks really cool. I don't know if you've. [00:58:29] Speaker A: I. [00:58:30] Speaker B: It's just going to be interesting to see manzanita, you know, bonsai stands, I think. [00:58:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, very interesting. I mean, it's very red. It's not my. Kind of. My favorite color of wood, but it is. It's definitely a fascinating species. I guess we'll have to wait. Like, how long does it take to dry? Like, two, like, years? Yeah, that lumber can be worked on like one to three years, something like that. [00:58:53] Speaker B: Gonna be a minute for sure. You ever try manzanita as. As bonsai? [00:58:59] Speaker A: No, I actually haven't. I. I don't collect. And so, like, if the opportunity presented itself and someone had a manzanita, I would try it, but I haven't. I have heard they are difficult bonsai. They don't respond well to bonsai. Like, transplant. [00:59:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't had the best luck with them, and I. The way that I experimented with them was to grow them from cutting, which is actually very easy to take from cutting. But I tried a bunch of different varieties, tried a bunch of different soil mixes. I experimented with, like, Kanuma pure pumice Akadama pumice lava. And for whatever reason, they grow like weeds for like, five years, and then they just slowly kind of start going downhill after a certain point in time. And I have no idea what it is exactly, but I would get like, maybe five to seven years out of a manzanita. I thought everything was going good, and then they just kind of slowly start going downhill. And I don't know what I'm doing wrong. If it's a nutritional Thing, one kind of hypothesis I had was maybe there's some type of mycelium or mycorrhizal relationship that we're missing in our soil, and that's what we could be missing. Like, I have no idea what it is, but a species that I really love, they have incredible bark. That red, beautiful bark and beautiful little flowers. And then I think it'd be a fantastic species for bonsai. It's just. Haven't had success. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. You're not the first person to kind of tell me about, like, wanting manzanita end up being difficult. I'm curious too. I just, I just haven't tried. Yeah, it would be a good species. Very kind of iconic. Coastal. Are there tree or shrub? [01:00:51] Speaker B: You know, I think they, they can be both. And it depends on the variety. Like, there are true tree varieties of manzanita. There's some that are this thick around, and then there's some that are more like groundscape. There's. There's a ton of different varieties of manzanita out there, but, yeah, bushes and trees. So, yeah, just depends on the variety. [01:01:13] Speaker A: I think I'm gonna have to keep an eye out because, you know, living in San Francisco, there aren't that many. The, the native species I can work with are limited, you know, because we don't get enough cold. And so for sure, have my eye. Yeah. For new coastal species. [01:01:30] Speaker B: Tell me about. I, I saw on your Instagram story the other day. You went to Bob Scheiman's place with Addison, I think. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. I, I, you know, I try to go every year, see what he has and, you know, pick up some new trees. Yeah. What can I tell you about the visit? [01:01:47] Speaker B: Well, I've never been to his place and I was curious, does he have many redwoods these days and what is his place like and whatever else you want to tell me about it. [01:02:00] Speaker A: Bob lives somewhere close to Mendocino. His business is Mendocino Cos Bonsai, for those of you listening. Never met him before. He's usually at the big shows in California. Right. He'll have a huge. He'll have a huge stand, have a lot of pots from Sarah Rayner and Vicky Chamberlain. And he'll have. He's the guy for pygmy cypress and redwood. Yeah. I've been going up yearly for a few years now and I've actually a whole bunch of trees I put on my Instagram, actually his trees that I've helped in kind of restyle over the past year or so. So I think this time When I went up, I was dropping off a bunch of trees and actually picking up a tree that had been sitting there for a bit. Yes, a lot of trees on his property. I think Bob's like 80, so I have no idea how he keeps up with like the hundreds of trees on his property. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, mostly redwood, pygmy cypress, some shore pine and smattering of like kind of other varieties. Mostly outdoors. He has like two small greenhouses. When I first went to this place, this might have been 2017 or 18, he had a lot more kind of like redwood stumps, like burls like that people built into kind of more abstract bonsai. Right. And then back then I was like, hey, do you have any upright redwoods, like straight trunks to build into formal uprights? He's like, nah, not so many right now. And then over the years I've noticed he now has a steady supply of upright redwoods. I think it's probably responding to changes in the market. More people are interested in that style for redwood now, but still, you know, so like he still has like these stumpy burls, but I want to say more uprights now than those, than those burls. So pretty interesting. Definitely worth the, worth a visit. I am really trying to acquire more good redwoods and cypresses where possible because they're two species I have no problems with at all and I can develop them very quickly. They behave very predictably in my environment. It's like home turf, right. They grow in San Francisco. So yeah, I try when I can to kind of get good specimens. [01:04:32] Speaker B: Awesome. You got a pretty big one from him, right? He brought something home. [01:04:37] Speaker A: It's. It's pretty big. It's. It's planted in one of those 27 gallon storage containers, you know, those green made ones. So it's pretty big. I remember telling Bob when I saw the tree, like, I'm not sure I actually like this tree, but I've never seen a redwood, a collected redwood like it. And it's like really chunky and really massive. It's like a, it's like a three trunk kind of clump, I guess they all. It has kind of the same fused root mass and the main trunk is like just extremely, extremely fat. It's like grotesque. And so I think it'll make a really cool and kind of one of a kind redwood. Yeah, I'm not like actually drawn to it, but I'm like, this tree is unique and powerful and unlike anything I've ever seen. So I should probably I should probably make it a bonsai. [01:05:27] Speaker B: Oh, I think it's going to be badass. That's exciting. [01:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. You should come see it sometime. [01:05:32] Speaker B: I would love to. You. You were telling me that you had some ideas or you were kind of just daydreaming maybe on the. On the ride home. Can you fill me in about that at all? [01:05:44] Speaker A: Oh, well, you know, actually, when I messaged you about that, it's more for ideas for our conversation today. [01:05:49] Speaker B: Oh, got it. Got it. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Podcast. So not. It wasn't specifically kind of for that tree. [01:05:54] Speaker B: Makes sense. [01:05:55] Speaker A: I think I know what I want to do. That tree. It's just going to take some time. Cool. [01:06:00] Speaker B: Cool. You know, it was cool, Sam. So when you were. Or. Excuse me, when you did the reconstruction on your home in your bonsai garden, you had all your trees at Peter's house. And so I go up to Peter T's house on the regular and I got to check out all your trees. So I'm like, I know your trees pretty well. I really like the redwood forest or clump that you have. I think that that is one of my other favorite trees of yours. So I think. I think my favorite three that I remember are your pygmy cypress forest on the stone, your redwood clump, and then I really like your Rocky Mountain juniper and the tom benda. I think that that's a really killer one as well. [01:06:46] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Yeah. That tree has. Has been experiencing health issues for a while, I think. I feel like 2025 is going to be the turning point. I'm finally going to repot it, take out more of the native soil. I've been experimenting with with some of the Blue Eden products Fertilizer. I'm hoping this is the turning point because that's a really good juniper and I've been jonesing the work it, but I, you know, I just haven't been able to work it because it's. It's been showing weakness. So definitely my favorite tree. Yeah. Thanks. I also really like that clump redwood. I was just thinking about what pot to put it in. Might be time for a repot. That one's a little interesting a design because it's like a clump, I guess they all have the same base. [01:07:38] Speaker B: Right. [01:07:39] Speaker A: The base kind of elevated off the soil surface a bit. So it's like a bunch of trees growing out of this base. But right now it's like looking more symmetrical than I want it to be. And it has a bit of. What do you call those, like, candle holders? I forget the name that. The name's escaping me, but it has this kind of, like, flare in the sides, wherever some of the trunks are coming out the side and making the base look a bit weak, you know, because of the width of the canopy and that, plus the kind of the symmetry that I have right now in the design. I'm trying to find a solution to solve those problems to make the tree a bit more interesting, but it definitely has a lot of. Definitely has a ton of potential. I also got that tree from Bob, so. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Nice. [01:08:25] Speaker A: Definitely a good. A good find, that one. [01:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Bob is a legend in the bonsai community. I feel like around here he is responsible for so much and has provided so many quality redwoods to the community and done so much teaching. I just have a ton of respect for him, and he was my first podcast guest, actually, back in the day, and even my first bonsai teacher, technically. Although it was just like, I did a GSBF convention workshop with him. That was my first experience with a bonsai teacher. So a lot of respect for Bob. Yeah. [01:09:03] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for him, too. And, you know, I mean, he's still doing it, and it's crazy, you know, like, at that age, like, just. Just the work to kind of, you know, drive over from Mendocino to wherever it is in California the shows are at and, like, packing the van and, you know, still going out collecting and stuff. I. I'm impressed. Every time I complain about doing anything in my backyard, I. I think of people like Bob, and I'm like, yeah, I'm just. I'm just lazy. I need to get off my ass and, like, go do it. [01:09:39] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. Awesome. Well, would you tell me a little bit about your bonsai garden? Like, would you maybe describe it for. For those who haven't seen it? [01:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah, let's see. Well, you haven't. Well, you've seen pictures, I guess. You haven't. You haven't been here in person. Shoot. What's the. How did I describe it? It's a. It's about 1500 square foot, kind of deep but narrow but deep backyard. Very kind of San Francisco layout. Let's see. Yeah, 1500 square feet. I have about, you know, between like, about 40, 30, 40 trees in there. Let's see. How else can I describe it? When I was thinking about kind of the aesthetic, I wanted something that fit the contemporary style of the house. So a little background here. I was renovating my house. House has been, like, 48, you know, very good. But Original condition and I wanted to update it. And along with that, I wanted to tear out the backyard as well and just kind of make the whole setup, well, look nicer and also be kind of better for my bonsai practice. You know, just, just quality of life improvements, like having double, like, French doors all the way from the garage to the backyard so I can cart trees in. Huge improvement. So my house itself is like, pretty, pretty clean and contemporary and, you know, with some, you know, some, some hints of like modernism in there. And I kind of wanted to carry that aesthetic to the backyard. You, I, I had mentioned, you had mentioned that we like walnut. I like walnut. And a lot of my kind of interiors have a whole bunch of walnut furniture, walnut veneer cabinetry in the kitchen. And kind of dark wood is the warm, the, you know, the warm, warm tones of like, dark wood are kind of my thing. And so that's something I want to do in the backyard as well. And I also have a lot of kind of black powder coated metal indoors or just like brushed metal. Black metal. And so I want to have those accents in the backyard as well. So clean lines, dark wood, use of metal, mostly black. And so my backyard has like, kind of those colors in it, which I guess is like, you know, not that common in like, bonsai gardens. I guess what I definitely didn't want to do is like, just build a, a Japanese garden because I, I mean, other than bonsai, I don't know anything about Japanese gardening. I, I admire Japanese gardens a lot when I visit Japan, but, you know, I didn't want to be. I didn't want to try to build a Japanese garden here that's never going to be as good as a real Japanese garden because I don't have knowledge, I don't know the people. I don't have a close relationship with someone who does. And, you know, it's just not authentic to where I am and who I am. Right. So that wasn't the route I want. Yeah, that wasn't the route I wanted to go down. Yeah. And the person who helped me do the design, Brian Kaufman, I met him on my internship at Mirai. He was working there part time then. Or was it full time then? He was doing a mix of bonsai stuff and landscape stuff. And after that, he started his own small landscape design business. And so I had him come down and kind of do the design for me, which my contractor then executed. So that was great because he was some. He was someone who had a good sense of aesthetics, new landscape design, but also Understood the needs of a bonsai person. And so I really wanted to hire someone like him. So I don't have to explain kind of the. Yeah, the basic logistical requirements of bonsai. Like what is a monkey pull? You know, like, I don't know if I would have to explain this to other people. And so it worked out really well. You know, my architect had a bunch of photographs taken of the whole house, including the backyard. I can't share them yet, but at some point, probably put them out there. People, you know. You know, if. If people want to visit, contact me on Instagram. I was happy to show people around, including yourself included, by the way. [01:13:55] Speaker B: Thank you so much, man. I'd really like to. Definitely, definitely would. [01:14:00] Speaker A: What. [01:14:01] Speaker B: What type of benches and monkey poles do you have? Or can you talk about those a little bit? [01:14:05] Speaker A: Yeah, for the monkey poles, I kind of contemplated a few different options for a while. I ended up doing metal posts and then actually metal posts and kind of metal. Metal platforms, but with a wood topping on the metal platforms, I guess. So there are two parts to this one. I learned from my time at Mirai that putting, you know, setting wood in the ground is something that will fail in the medium term just because of that kind of that connection point to the ground. Right. It's just going to rot out at some point. I didn't really want to have to deal with that. So I wanted some kind of metal, something with more longevity. Originally I wanted black metal. And then just like the local fabricator is kind of expensive, the powder coat was going to be expensive. And so I went for the next best thing, which is just like ungalvanized steel and just letting it rust to get that kind of organic rusted look. So these are 4x4 square steel tubes. And then I borrowed this idea from Andrew Robson, where I then had a metal platform welded to a smaller metal tube. Right. So that. So that this top, this platform could sleeve into the 4x4. I think Andrew might have used like a smaller square tube in the sleeve into the larger square tube. For me, I did a smaller circular tube so that my platforms can actually rotate. I thought it was a cool idea. Honestly, I don't ever rotate them. You know, I would. I would just turn the whole tree around. So I'm not really sure how useful that was. Maybe I would just have gone, you know, in hindsight, would have just have gone for the. The smaller square tube, but. And then I had my friend Jay McDonald help me build some wood platforms that are attached to the metal platform. One for aesthetics. You know, I like the look of tree on wood. And two, I just didn't want the tree sitting on metal. Like, on hot days, I figured that metal is going to heat up, and I was kind of concerned about the effect that was going to have on the trees. So those are the monkey poles. [01:16:26] Speaker B: Why not rotate them with the. Why not rotate the top as opposed. So do you rotate the tree? Just the tree. [01:16:34] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm still figuring out garden logistics here because I've only lived in this house at this point, like, half a year. Well, when it comes time to rotate the trees, I don't want to just, like, turn the tree around and have the back of the tree facing me in the kind of the display area of the garden. That kind of defeats the purpose of having that display area. So what I actually do is I take the, you know, I move those trees to the bench area, and then I choose a new tree that needs to be rotated and I put it on the platform. So. Okay, so I wouldn't really just, like, in place, just turn the tree. So that rotation, that. That rotational capacity is useful when I just want to, like, I don't know, occasionally, like, water a different part of the tree that's hard to access and so on. Right. But yeah, I never really rotate the tree in place because. [01:17:21] Speaker B: Okay. [01:17:21] Speaker A: It'll just look. [01:17:22] Speaker B: Makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I rotate my trees, and it's my least favorite thing that I do. Like, every week I turn them around. But I like your idea way better. So what I should do is just switch them over to the opposite side of the garden, and then the front would be the new back and the back would be the new front. I think that that works better. But, like, I hate rotating my trees around because then I look at the back and I'm sad until I get to turn them back. So every week. [01:17:56] Speaker A: Every week is really impressive. I've been. I try, like, once a month, and I keep, like, increasing the interval. And right now, aspirationally, I'm trying to do it once every three months, but we'll see. But by moving trees around. I picked it up from Ryan at Marai. I guess. I guess he was always very concerned about where the trees sit in relation to other trees. Like, the whole garden was kind of always meant to be a bit of a display area. Right. So just being very thoughtful about. About the presentation of the trees in relation to each other and not trying to make the horticulture line up with the aesthetics of the garden always meant more work because you know, once you move one tree, then there's like a. There's like a cascading effect on a whole bunch of other trees. You have to move around to make all of this work. So for sure, just two days ago, I did a full rotation of my garden and you know, I had to stand there for a bit, some of the trees off the poles and just like think of like what. What tree to put where. [01:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:54] Speaker A: So that this all makes sense aesthetically. [01:18:58] Speaker B: Makes sense. Makes sense. [01:19:00] Speaker A: Bonsai life. [01:19:01] Speaker B: Bonsai life for sure. Awesome, man. Well, hey, I've really enjoyed this and it's been awesome to chat with you tonight. I guess maybe just kind of like to close. To close out. Is there any other topics that you were interested in hitting on or. One question that I always like to ask is just like, is there anything that you have been daydreaming about? You know, I'm always trying to just unlock the daydreaming thoughts that are potentially in bonsai folk head. Bonsai folks. Head heads. Because I. I usually find those things interesting and I like to nerd out and geek out about them. So I don't know if there is anything. But. [01:19:51] Speaker A: You know, I. I do have one more topic that lines up with something I daydream about. [01:19:57] Speaker B: Okay. [01:20:00] Speaker A: Well, I guess something I didn't get to talk about that I was thinking of talking about was just like design thinking in bonsai and how that's something I've found very. Has kept me into it. As I've gotten better at bonsai and more experienced, I more and more getting more, you know, thinking. Spending more time thinking about design of my trees and kind of aesthetics and how to make my trees kind of look interesting or look the way kind of convey the intention that I have for them. We don't have to get deep into that right now, but I do think that's something that kind of Ryan rubbed off on me and has kept me interested in the hobby more and more as I've kind of grown in. In experience. And I'm often thinking about other interesting ways to kind of design my trees, but also to do display. I haven't had a lot of chance to do display. In fact, the first PBE Pacific Bonsai Expo two years ago was the first time I had to kind of display trees in kind of a very serious setting. And so that really got me thinking about what I want to convey and how and so on. And so I've been thinking about maybe opportunities to collaborate with other artists to do like interesting containers, for example, or Interesting art to be displayed with bonsai. Tons of people have thought about this and experimented a lot with this. But I really am into the idea of like bonsai display and the composition and kind of setting place and you know, you know, showing place, showing season, you know, showing some kind of deeper meaning. I just haven't gone to, you know, gotten many opportunities and time to go deep into putting together a really cool composition. Right. And I've also been kind of unwilling to just. To just buy a whole bunch of like the classical display elements just because those are like what you display at bonsai. Like, I find those like traditional scrolls beautiful. I'm just like, not that into that art on its own, you know, on its own and just, you know, just, just to buy a whole collection, collection of them, just to display bonsai in this standard format, like, doesn't really, again, doesn't feel authentic to me. And so I, I, you know, I run into art that I enjoy quite often. I mean, I've been trying to decorate my home and get wall art and stuff like that. And like, when I go to these galleries, I run the artists who produce work that's interesting and that might kind of work well at bonsai. And I do dream of maybe collaborating with certain artists where to put together something interesting that again, is authentic to me and like, kind of authentic to the place, the time and place I live in. And so I'm very interested in that, but I haven't had the time to really invest really heavily in that yet. Same for containers. Like, I love Japanese multi containers, traditional containers, but I'm always wondering what other more interesting creative things I can put my trees in that are still high quality and thoughtfully crafted and have meaning or interesting shape and design. And so like, I've been, you know, thinking of working with people who do different kinds of metal fabrication or metal art or glass or all these other kinds of materials where you can kind of just be more creative and free form. So things I'm dreaming about, if any of your listeners are artists of those sorts or are interested in collaborating very much. Kind of happy to chat, but always looking forward, always thinking about more interesting ways to, yeah, give context to these trees. [01:24:08] Speaker B: That's fantastic and very fun to think about. One, One thing I think about kind of on that same vein is I think it'd be really cool if we could say, display a Sierra juniper with a painting that was relative to our, the, the Sierra native environment. So maybe rather than Mount Fuji, which doesn't make sense, we have. [01:24:33] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:33] Speaker B: Like a iconic Image within Yosemite, like El Cap or something like that. I don't know exactly, but either you could do a scroll or a painting, but something minimalistic where it didn't overshadow the tree. I think some things like that could be really fun and exciting. And I like thinking about display as well. [01:24:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I do wish there are more opportunities to display. You know, one thing I. One thing I kind of like slightly regret with my home renovation is that I didn't set aside a space for indoor display. I guess I wasn't ready to commit to that yet. Right. And I wasn't going to build. Same way I was going to build a Japanese garden. I wasn't going to build a traditional tokonoma that made no sense in the kind of the architecture of my house. It's a very specific feature from a very specific culture. But I think if I had my own display space, I would have my own little playground to experiment some of these ideas. And then, you know, if I have to buy these, these, these items to do display, at least I'm enjoying it myself. You know, just. It just seems like a real pain to buy, like, you know, really not, not inexpensive kind of crafted items only to show it once a year at some, you know, once every two years at some, you know, national show. And then, you know, you pack it away. Right. [01:25:56] Speaker B: For sure, for sure. [01:25:58] Speaker A: And so maybe at some point, maybe at some point I'll do a mini, mini like follow up renovation or something just to add a display area. Right. And then that's going to give me a lot more motivation to pursue these ideas. [01:26:11] Speaker B: Love it. Yeah, you should. It's never too late. And I would like to do something like that as well. Although. Yeah, it just starts. These costs start adding up very quickly and so the trying to do it can get very challenging from a financial perspective, so. Oh, for sure. [01:26:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I felt the same way. Well, pipe dreams. I hope we both able to achieve some of this. We should talk before the next big show. Next time it would be fun to brainstorm kind of different ideas for kind of interesting, kind of tasteful display that is absolutely, you know, contemporary and contextualized. [01:26:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it, man. That sounds great. [01:26:52] Speaker A: Cool. [01:26:53] Speaker B: Well, hey, Sam, thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it, man. And I've been super impressed with all the work you've been doing. You seem very talented and skilled in bonsai and I can't believe how quickly you have become so good. So great work, man. And really appreciate your time here. Tonight. And, yeah, thanks for everything, man. Appreciate it. [01:27:16] Speaker A: Appreciate the kind words, Appreciate your time. And, yeah, thanks for. Thanks for inviting me. [01:27:20] Speaker B: Great chatting. Most definitely. Take care, man. [01:27:24] Speaker A: Talk to you later, Nick. See you around soon. Bye.