William N. Valavanis
Chumono
Last week Diane stopped by a nearby garden center and discovered a couple of interesting trees, a Waldbrunn Colorado Blue Spruce and a Sharps Pygmy Japanese Maple. She sent me a few photos and the next day we went together to pick up the two trees. She has a good trained eye. This cultivar of spruce is new to me and has small foliage with a bluish color
On Saturday and Sunday we displayed at the 41st Park Avenue Fest, featuring over 350 artists from across the country. We have participated in nearly 30 of the events selling indoor beginner bonsai, a few specimens and demonstrating. This is done to introduce another group of the public to bonsai, hopefully for them to register for my Introductory Bonsai Course and purchase a healthy and beautiful indoor bonsai. Good friends Rick Marriott and Alan Adair along with Diane talked to the public and sold bonsai while I demonstrated on the spruce and maple.
Although the retail price was $42.99, there was a 30% sale on so I actually only paid $30 for the tree. Not bad....
Diane really picked a winner with the Waldbrunn Colorado Blue Spruce! The trunk had excellent trunk taper and movement with plenty of branches. On Saturday I worked five hours to shape the tree, this is in addition to spending another hour finding the base of the trunk and surface roots before the festival demonstration. The wiring and shaping so long because I had to answer questions too.
The Sharps Pygmy Japanese Maple also came out well, but did not take nearly the time to design, prune, wire and shape. When I finished I was mad because it would have made an excellent demonstration for my Black Scissors Live Demo Around the World on Sunday, September 10th at 2pm. There will be live demonstrations from 40 artists around the world throughout the day. I did not expect the tree to be a good demonstration tree, but it was. Its extremely difficult to demonstrate on a deciduous species and end up with more than a skeleton or stump. This tree had plenty of branches with small foliage.
Since the maple and spruce came out quite nice we returned to the garden center to look for more. Luckily we found two more of the Waldbrunn Colorado Blue Spruce and another Sharps Pygmy Japanese Maple. I’ll use the maple as part of my live demonstration which will be on Training Maple Bonsai.
My assistant Alan Adair and I transplanted the spruce into a training pot. He washed the soil surface looking for additional roots to display.
On Saturday and Sunday we displayed at the 41st Park Avenue Fest, featuring over 350 artists from across the country. We have participated in nearly 30 of the events selling indoor beginner bonsai, a few specimens and demonstrating. This is done to introduce another group of the public to bonsai, hopefully for them to register for my Introductory Bonsai Course and purchase a healthy and beautiful indoor bonsai. Good friends Rick Marriott and Alan Adair along with Diane talked to the public and sold bonsai while I demonstrated on the spruce and maple.
Although the retail price was $42.99, there was a 30% sale on so I actually only paid $30 for the tree. Not bad....
Diane really picked a winner with the Waldbrunn Colorado Blue Spruce! The trunk had excellent trunk taper and movement with plenty of branches. On Saturday I worked five hours to shape the tree, this is in addition to spending another hour finding the base of the trunk and surface roots before the festival demonstration. The wiring and shaping so long because I had to answer questions too.
The Sharps Pygmy Japanese Maple also came out well, but did not take nearly the time to design, prune, wire and shape. When I finished I was mad because it would have made an excellent demonstration for my Black Scissors Live Demo Around the World on Sunday, September 10th at 2pm. There will be live demonstrations from 40 artists around the world throughout the day. I did not expect the tree to be a good demonstration tree, but it was. Its extremely difficult to demonstrate on a deciduous species and end up with more than a skeleton or stump. This tree had plenty of branches with small foliage.
Since the maple and spruce came out quite nice we returned to the garden center to look for more. Luckily we found two more of the Waldbrunn Colorado Blue Spruce and another Sharps Pygmy Japanese Maple. I’ll use the maple as part of my live demonstration which will be on Training Maple Bonsai.
My assistant Alan Adair and I transplanted the spruce into a training pot. He washed the soil surface looking for additional roots to display.
