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Earlier this week I visited the Sei Boku Bonsai Kai to talk about display ahead of their annual exhibit in June. After running through the basics, we looked at member displays with an eye toward making improvements using the stands, trees, and accents we had on hand.

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.