Korean Hornbeam workshop with bonsai master John Romano

This month, I am showing a video my wife, Sarah Whitaker, made during a workshop with John Romano. John is famous for his shohin, but is expert in all bonsai techniques and styles. He is also a wonderful person and teacher. The tree is a Korean Hornbeam that I got as a prebonsai 2 years ago. At the time of the workshop, I had roughed out the styling of the excellent raw material, root pruned and potted the tree.

The Hornbeam when I first got it in 2011

 It was time for the next step up in its bonsai life - a style refinement that could be built upon in the subsequent years. I also needed help in solving the tree's few peculiarities; all trees have them, if not all the same kind. The tree was at the bud development stage and very fragile. It was unpleasantly easy to knock buds off by merely touching them. So, the work had to be very careful and delicate. I still lost some important buds, however. The video is a bit over 20 minutes long, but it is compressed from hours of work and thought. I hope you get as many ideas from John as I did.

Korean Hornbeam on a stand I designed

My Double Trunk Korean Hornbeam on a stand I designed.

This tree was a disaster when I got it at a bonsai nursery about 6 or 7 years ago. Actually, my wife found it on the edge of the property roasting in the August sun. All the leaves on the daughter trunk were burned to a crisp. Moreover, it had air roots, if you can believe it. That is, those roots that now form a fine nebari were much higher and you could see through them - as if the tree were on a tripod. It was a consignment, so I guess somebody wasn't too interested in it. The first thing I did, after driving it home, was get it into the shade and watered, and watered regularly, until the weather cooled. Then an emergency repot (of course it was pot bound) and severe root prune to bring the nebari back down to Earth. Most importantly, I made sure there was space for the tiny feeder roots to drink and grow. In addition to making the root pad about 1.5 inches thick, I cut scallops around the pad's edges for space. I dusted the entire root mass with hormone and replaced what passed for soil with my own mix, which, by some accident, corresponds approximately to both Walter Pall's and Julian Adams' soil preferences: 80% Turface (or equivalent), 15% milled sphagnum moss (which I create by rubbing the strands against a wire soil sizing screen over a pail) and about 5% rotted cedar bark. The sphagnum moss has antibacterial properties and has long been used as a wound dressing in the terrible wars we seem to have too often - before antibiotics were discovered. The roots certainly needed that help, along with the hormone. (Naturally, everyone has their own fave soil; I just wanted to level with you about what I did. Use what works for you.) I never thought I could get away with this sort of thing in late August (late March is my usual repot time), but it worked.