Tony Tickle visited us!

Bonsai friend Slaven boldly went to Bonsai Europa 2015 exhibition in Manchester, and brought back a valuable contact, Tony Tickle himself! He promised Slaven (and his son), he would come to Finland in return, and so he did. The big day was yesterday.

We all brought in some trees. I brought those that I have a question or want an opinion. We didn't have too much time, and we let Tony to decide what he wanted to talk about and what trees to give attention. I hoped he would grab my chinese juniper, and so he did. Masa had an juniper from the same origin, Bonsaischule Wenddorf, Juniper prebonsai.

And traditional before-after pictures:

Sorry for the different color temperature. Basically what Tony did was to reveal the trunk, turn it counter clockwise about 30 degrees (without interfering with the roots at all), and to remove some stuff that was not needed. This was the first round with this tree, so there is still a lot to do. Tree made juvenile needles when I got it, and during the summer it has gone back to making scales. Tony tough us, that one should not remove more that 30% of the foliage at one time, to prevent the tree switching back to making needles.

That was perhaps an hours work, so there was still time for another juniper.

All in all, we were very happy we had this opportunity. Right away it was obvious, we want more. We will try to get Tony back here perhaps next spring. Tony pointed out that we should get as many teachers as possible, because all teachers have different things to offer.

Next time we must get more attendees. There were approximately 1/3 of the Finnish bonsai enthusiasts, so we could do better 8-).

Once again, thank you Tony.

More photos


PS, at Wenddorfs Juniper prebonsai, there is STILL one that I actually thought of buying in the spring, this one:

At about 300 euros, Tony told us these were  a bargain.