NABF Newsletter
#6
Feature #13
West Coast Collecting
By David Rowe
I have always loved collecting trees for my
future Bonsai. The character and mood of the harsh environments
that these trees come from cannot be duplicated in a nursery
‘stock’ plant. I moved away from the harsh winters
of Ontario, Canada, in September of ‘99 and the first
week of October I was taken on my first west coast collecting
trip by George Heffelfinger, and Dan Robinson. I collected
two trees (1 given by George) and 2 rolls of film; what a
knockout the scenery was!
Mountain Scenery at 9.00am. The snow was gone
by noon
Collected tree
After styling
After this there was no stopping me. I am a mere ½
hr. from the mountain turn-off that I use, and another ¾
of an hour up the logging trails that take me to the collecting
area. In the short time that I have been here, I have found
that the time to successfully collect the trees is totally
different from the east. In Ontario, I found that the spring
was the only time that you could collect and get a 70-80%
success rate; in this part of the world, fall is the only
time that I have had 90% success rate. My understanding of
this is, that by the end of September, beginning of October,
the first frosts and/or snow has occurred at the collecting
site – 5000ft and up. When dug the tree is dormant,
even though it may be a wonderful sunny 10degrees Celsius
day, the nights are cold. When the collected material is dug
into the ground at sea level, there are three more months
of growing time, before the odd few frosts that we get, set
in.
I belong to the local Art Gallery in Qualicum Beach, where
I teach bonsai. It is a restored 1895 school house, lovingly
called “TOSH” (The Old School House). Last year
I asked Korin, who is the chief administrator, “what
do you use the 8’ by 4’ planter for, other than
weeds? “Why?” was the logical reply. “I
have some very large bonsai material I could use to make a
mountain-top scene right in the planter.” “Great,”
was the reply. So in the middle of December, I took the old
weeds out of the planter, dug it over, added some good soil,
and prepared the trees. I had 2 trees that were in plastic
boxes for over a year and they were ready to use, but they
were quite large. This was the place; I did the major pruning
at the house, and two hours later the trees were in place.
In January I did the rest of the pruning work and did the
wire work. This is what they look like now……
Last week I was asked to do some Bonsai work at the Art Gallery
of Greater Victoria. It was for raising funds for the gallery,
called “Art in Bloom”
During the demo I explained the technique for branch splitting,
and the use of Raffia to radically change the shape at the
top of the tree.
Applying the raffia:
The result (taken later at home)
Other trees that have been worked on in the last few months
were collected 2 years ago. They have recovered and the time
was right. The rainy season.
Alpine Fir
Logepole pine, completed last year
Mountain Hemlock
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