Home

GardenScape 2018 is the annual flower and garden show in Rochester, New York, which runs from March 8-11, 2018. It is held at the newly remodeled dome in Henrietta, New York, a suburb of Rochester. Top landscape companies from around the area transformed the Dome into a living garden paradise. GardenScape showcases the most unique designs, display, plants and products for the attendees.

Removing the flower buds from satsuki azalea bonsai is a common technique for getting a tree to focus on producing new growth instead of flowering.

Air pockets in the rootball, we are often told, lead to dead roots which can cause further dieback on roots or branches. It stands to reason – roots exposed to the air will not fare well on varieties like satsuki.

Currently I’m conducting my 40th annual lecture tour in the Southeast United States. Today I’m helping my friend and photographer Joe Noga in Winterville, North Carolina, with his fine bonsai collection.

For most varieties of bonsai, there are many approaches to repotting. Soil mixes, timing, and the number and selection of roots to be cut can vary widely depending on who is doing the work.

I’d like to highlight a comment from the last post:

There are some obvious signs that indicate when it’s time to repot a tree – like when the water fails to percolate or when a pot breaks.

The Koto Hime Japanese maple, Acer palmatum ‘Koto Hime,’ is in the dwarf or yatsubusa group of plants which are prized for bonsai training. This cultivar is best when trained as a shohin or small size bonsai because of the diminutive and tightly congested foliage.

I’ve been on the search for the “perfect” container for one of my favorite shohin bonsai Koto Hime Japanese maple started over 30 years ago from a cutting. During the past four months I’ve purchased three containers. A few days ago during our bonsai tour of seven top potters in Tokoname, Japan, I was fortunate to find another three “perfect” containers. A glazed container was obtained from Ikko Watanabe. That was about an hour after I purchased two unglazed containers from the Reiho Kiln.

Toward the end of 2014, I picked up an old cork oak bonsai that belonged to a former member of Bay Island Bonsai. The tree hadn’t been repotted for maybe 5-10 years. Getting it out of the pot took several hours – the whole repotting took more than a day.