I will start out with mentioning the ethical considerations of collecting as the way in which we collect affects collectors worldwide. Unethical collecting can give a bad name to bonsaists everywhere and can make it very difficult for others to acquire permission to collect in the future. The following are some considerations that I personally abide by regardless of if I am collecting in the wild or in suburbs.

Always obtain permission from the landowner before you collect. Every single piece of land belongs to someone, be it a roadside, construction lot, field, woods, abandoned house, or farm. Never collect a tree that you are not sure has a very good chance of survival. Experience can tell if a tree can be successfully collected or not. Only collect what you will use. Always fill in your holes and remove any and all signs that you were there. Don’t leave your garbage behind and always pack out other garbage that you may find. The key here is to leave the site better than you found it. Over the years I have refined the tools I take down to the base. The following is a list of tools and supplies I carry in my truck when urban collecting. I refine this quite a bit when I am in the woods as I try to keep my backpack light. Short shovel which I keep a good sharp edge on. Folding Shovels break easy, I don’t use them. Long handled and short handled pruners. A good sharp knife. A saw I carry a handsaw for small jobs and for serious collecting I pack the battery powered saws-all. A small hatchet. A pry bar. Burlap bags and twine. A few nursery pots. Snacks and water. A tool set. A small plastic child’s sled, nothing works better for dragging a tree to the truck. I also have a lightweight come-a-long I pack for tougher jobs. I pass a lot of homes both in the city and up north that has overgrown landscaping and I have found that the simple act of asking a homeowner if they would like those old over grown shrubs removed free of charge usually results in permission happily given. Sometimes I will throw in the offer of replacing the old shrubs with new, fresh, young ones, an offer not refused often. There are literally millions of old over grown shrubs out there. Junipers, Yews, Boxwoods, Rose of Sharon’s, holly, etc. just waiting to be discarded or used. I am sure that most of you have seen shrubs that were fantastic but never stopped to ask, This is a incredible source of developed bonsai stock that should be taken advantage of before they end up in pieces on the curb side. The key to obtaining permission is to be polite and offer a needed service. If you are refused, thank them kindly and leave your number in case they ever decide to make a change. Trust me, they will call you back if you made a good impression. Once permission is given, remember that they will refer you if you do a good job. Always backfill the hole, I carry some grass seed so I can seed the area as well. Never drive on the grass and always leave the area looking better than it did before you came.

There is a member of our club that actually advertises this service and charges very little if anything to remove old shrubs and trees. He has acquired some of the best stock you can imagine while performing a valuable service, saving trees that otherwise would have been discarded, and promoting a service that gives all bonsaists a good name. Collecting On The Spot For trees that are not as old or for trips where for reasons the tree must be collected when spotted must be collected differently from those in the wild where you can take your time. Collecting on the spot requires that you get as much as the root ball as possible to assure survival. The soil conditions in the spot you collect will dictate if spot collecting can be done. Some places you will find create naturally tight root balls close to the trunk, others the roots may go on for yards with no feeder roots close to the trunk. The latter trees should be left alone; they are not collectable on the spot and would require a longer plan such as the three-year plan outlined above. After Care Once you have collected the trees you wanted be sure to keep the root ball damp, never allow it to dry out. I use my judgment, depending on the overall health of the tree and the root mass to determine if it will go into a training pot, growing box, or straight into the growing bed. I never seriously work on a collected tree until one or two full seasons has passed and the tree shows significant signs of healthy growth. I will remove any unwanted or unneeded branches to make transport easier and depending on the amount of roots collected, I will prune back a little. OOPS! So you collected that tree you found, and to your great dismay, the roots are not quite what you expected. For trees where the root mass is small and there are few feeder roots I treat them almost like an air-layer. I securely tied the tree into a growing box with a soil mixture of 75% sphagnum moss and 25% of free draining soil mix. I have had great success with this method once I realized that I do the same thing to “create” roots from nothing on air-layers. I use this technique only in early spring as it seems to work best then and it allows enough roots to form to allow me to transplant before the seasons end. This technique has also served me well in the past with trees that suffered from rot. The pictures below are of a native Northern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) That I collected from a yard yesterday. I also got a very nice Japanese Maple that the top portion had died off and the bottom trunk sprouted heavily. I took these trees straight from the ground to our local Four Seasons Bonsai Club meeting where Vance Wood was kind enough to offer his vast knowledge to help re-pot the Cedar into a drawer, for a demo. See my mention of using drawers here. Thanks Vance, you made the meeting a success and your knowledge and help was greatly appreciated, not to mention wearing me out, where do youm get all that energy? The second picture is of the Cedar while it was still in the ground. The fourth picture is of the front, that's Vance who restrained from cutting me a few times and a very haggled me. The last picture is of the maple after potting. Will Heath

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hm..... i was always wondering... what makes a bonsai a good pick if you are picking it out of the ground? and how big is too big... i am a beginner and i would greatly appreciate your help.

You look for the same characteristics in all stock, which is usually easier to find in wild growing trees and shrubs that have been browsed by animals or beat up by the elements. This works for urban stock as well, except we are the animals who constantly trimmed the plants.

Look for good trunks, nebari, branches, foliage. As with all plants, faults can be used or corrected over time, but having the thick trunks and such that only comes with many years of growing in the open ground is a excellent reason to collect, these attributes are very hard to find in nursery stock.

How big is too big? Good question of which I am sure that everyone will have differing opinions on. As you can see with the cedar above, it was a five foot high shrub when I collected it, it is substantially shorter now and will be worked down over the years even more. The biggest enlightenment most bonsaist go through at first is when they realize just how big all those bonsai they looked at in all the books really are.

Good luck,

Will

I have been asked what in the world am I going to do with that Maple stump...

One option that I see is shown in the attached picture where I will remove a "V" shaped section from the main trunk and gently carve the trunk to merge with the two main branches and attempt a modified broom style.

The maple is at an angle now due to the vast rootage underneath. It has real nice nebari but also a lot of roots underneath those. I scraped the bottoms of the upper nebari and dusted with root hormone before potting.

Any suggestions?


Will

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Ah...this brings us to an interesting question. How well does Japanese maple work in the broom style? Can anyone point me to an example of an artistically successful broom style Japanese maple?

Cheers,
Carl

Perhaps, you can see some other option that I can not? But that is a styling conversation best left to when the tree is ready for some work, unless someone has another way to go?

Anyone else doing urban collecting this year?


Will

OK I'm going to stick my neck into this one. Could Carl be asking why did you collect this tree if there isn't a plan in place for it? You mention in your 'Collecting Guidlines' above to only collect what you will use... if there isn't a plan for it, how are you going to use it? I have collected several trees that I now admit I had no plan for....they are still awaiting a decision and probably will just go back to be landscape trees.

I think an addition to your guidlines...which I admit are real nice, is to know that the collected material has a future and that you are not collecting it just because.....I came all this way and I'm going to get something!!!


my 2 cents
Jay

I'm glad you asked.

This is urban collecting. The owner of the property I got these two trees from wanted them gone, in fact he wanted them gone so bad I actually stopped him a while ago while he was trying to pull the Japanese Maple out with a rope and a truck. But this isn't the point.

I have found that with collected material it is best not to have a plan. No, I am serious. I can never tell which parts will take off and which will die back, maybe some people can, I never could. As I stated in the article above, wait for a year or two be for you start work, this allows for the plant to recuperate from the stress of collecting and also allows you to see many possibilities along the way. My original thoughts are very seldom the final plan.

As to the maple in question, as I have stated, the top portion of the tree was already dead, it died back some years ago. The tree responded by putting out new growth below the dead part, naturally reducing the height.

When I decided to save it instead of letting the landowner toss it, it was because of the thick trunk, low branching, and good nebari. As far as a plan goes, I can always trunk chop it lower in the future.

Again it was collected for it's thick trunk, nebari, and low branching, attributes that would attract any collector. In fact I wish I had a few dozen more just like it....it would take many years to develop the trunk and nebari of a Japanese Maple to this degree, surely it was worth the effort?

Will

This is one of the best Maple brooms I have seen. It was displayed at Yamato Bonsai Club in '99

Regards,

Matt

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Thanks, Matt.

That's at least as good as I've seen, and it's a very informal broom.

Broom style is conspicuously absent from Kyosuke Gun's book on shohin Japanese maple and from Peter Adams' Bonsai Design: Japanese Maple book.

Best regards,
Carl