Peter's Bonsai Blog 

Collected Material

For many people collecting trees is an integral part of the hobby.  Please remember that if you are collecting from somebody's land it is essentail that you obtain permission from the landowner.

Many trees can be collected from your own, or from friends and neighbours gardens.  Here are some trees that were;-

Details of how these trees were devloped are shown elsewhere on this site.

Here are some recently collected  trees, all newly potted up.  I like large trees and many of them need a large container.  I love making wooden boxes for my trees!

A collected tree (below) straight from the ground, and back in the studio where it was  potted up  for the first time.  A tree like this  would need several years to build up the root and foliage mass before any serious styling could be done. However, the truth is that this collected tree died.  It just didn't have enough root when I collected it, nor enough foliage to generate new roots.  One of the keys to sucessfully collecting trees is to ensure that you have enough fine root for the tree to survive.  How much is enough?  Unfortunately  thas very hard to describe as it comes down to experience and to a large extent, to experience with that particular type of tree.  One thing is for sure - collect as many fine roots as you can!

Peter H (below) is looking pleased with all these shohin size trees he was able to collect.  This looks like a ready made cascade style shohin bonsai. Look at the amount of fiberous root !  All he needs now is a decent pot.