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Spring has sprung, and I hope the good weather remains (It won’t, forecast is for 14F for Tuesday.) But we are still going ahead and repotting and root pruning.

Formal display alcove
Semi-formal display alcove
Sean Smith is a gifted artist who has trained in furniture and bonsai display table construction, suiseki daiza carving and bonsai, both in the United States and Japan. With an extensive background in construction, he combined it with his passion of bonsai and started his Custom Oriental Woodcraft business (bonsai display tables, suiseki daiza and Japanese rooms) and now his Three Mountain Bonsai Studio- Sanzan Bonsai Gakkou (bonsai instruction, bonsai display and Japanese aesthetics.)

For the past five years I’ve been working to rehabilitate a semi-cascade coast live oak. Now that the tree is healthy, the silhouette is filling in quickly.

Earlier this year I spent a week working on young pines with John Eads of Left Coast Bonsai. We pruned and/or wired almost every young pine in my garden to give us a chance to review the approach for trees at different stages of development.

This week I finally got around to repotting a red pine forest that hadn’t been worked on in a while. Midway through, I paused to take note of the different techniques I was using to do the work.

I’ve received questions from clubs in recent weeks about what they can do to support the Pacific Bonsai Expo this fall. They’re excited about the event and they want to help!

In spring of 2018, I picked up a prostrata juniper from Kenji Miyata. The branches were long and the foliage was course but I liked the curves in the lower trunk. It was a perfect candidate for grafting.

Last week John Eads of Left Coast Bonsai was in the garden to help get my young trees into shape ahead of repotting season. As John studied with Michael Hagedorn, he’s a great resource for developing the dwarf Japanese flowering quince known as chojubai.

Last weekend the Bay Area Bonsai Associates, affectionately known as BABA, held their 40th Anniversary exhibition at the Lakeside Garden Center in Oakland, California.

For this fall’s Pacific Bonsai Expo, we have some judging categories for narrow groups of trees (Best Large Conifer is an example) and other categories that include a broad diversity of species (like Best Medium Bonsai Display).