Modern Bonsai Episode 24 " Australian Native Bonsai " Ft Stephen Cullum

Today's episode is brought to you by BonsaiN, your premier online bonsai shop. Get your tools, wire, pots, and even bonsai themed merchandise with worldwide shipping, reward points, and buy now pay later options. Visit www.bonsai-en.shop. That's www.bonsai-en.shop today. What's up guys and girls and welcome to the Modern Bonsai podcast. On today's episode we feature Steven Callum, who has just released his brand new book titled Australian-Eddy Bonsai. We talk to Steve about some of his findings over the years concentrating on Australian-Eddy material in Bonsai, and get some insights into his styling practices to help you move away from some of those classic blackpine styling queues, opting used on Broadway trees. This is my first time meeting you. I've definitely heard your name pop up you know within the Australian-Bonsai community, because you know like we spoke about before we started recording here that you know the bonsai, Australian-Bonsai community anyway seems you know so small compared to everything else out there in the world. But before we jump into it did you just want to give our listeners a little bit of an idea of who you are and you know what you've practiced in bonsai so far up until this point? Okay okay well I've been practicing bonsai for in excess of probably 35 years now. Developed an interest I think from my parents who were interested in plants and and that kind of naturally rubbed off. You know when you're younger and a younger life you've you know you've got a job you've got a family it's it's hard to find time for a bonsai and for the first you know 20 years or so 15 years of my bonsai practice. My bonsai got some of my time but of course perhaps not all the time that they needed and I tried to learn as best I could from various places. I went to club meetings and found them difficult to learn what to do and how to do it and I think I learned most of my bonsai practice and and processes I think from bonsai today the magazine and I started subscribing to that magazine where very first came out and I found it I found it very helpful and and very informative because it it offered real tangible information on the steps and the stages and the processes you could use in developing a tree. So it was pretty helpful and so the kind of that continued and I also got through my working career I got to a point where I looked at what I'd been making for the last 20 years and realized that what I'd been producing following some of the traditional methodologies were were kind of caricatures of bonsai rather than impressions of old trees and I started to look at them much more critically and kind of fell out of love with a lot of them because of the styling models that have been applied and was then determined to make a change and make them much more kind of naturalistic in their styling and so I've moved along that path since that time and then around 2014 2015 started to get interested in natives much more heavily and so over the last 10 years I've changed my collection out and a lot of the old trees that I had have now gone those that didn't succumb to re-styling I moved on and I probably only got 10 or 12 trees that I had 10 or 15 years ago and all the rest now have been replaced with natives and the natives that I've been growing I've styled them entirely differently much more naturalistically much more much more like you would see of mature versions of the same species and and also when that time developing an interest in bonsai and developing this a native bonsai chasing down and hunting down a large variety of species that generally are not so accessible to to the community yeah yeah it's interesting because you know you said that you've been practicing bonsai for about 35 years now and you know something that interests me anyway is at least let's just say for the first 15 years of that yeah you wouldn't have had access to the information that we do today and like you were saying that you had like bonsai well it's bonsai focus now it was bonsai today that's right yeah back when it first started but you know did you find that once the internet took over in bonsai did you find that that maybe accelerated your learning a little bit in bonsai or did you find that it had the opposite effect where it kind of tarnished your your information a little bit because the internet's one of those things where it's it's just a never ending like pit of information but the problem you have is sorting that information out and the problem with that is is when you're learning you don't know what you don't know so you can take any information and figure that that's correct so you can either really accelerate your learning because there's so much information there or you can end up digging yourself a big hole so did you find that that transition of the the internet phase did you find that it had an accelerating effect or did you find that it was a little bit you know kind of a negative thing yeah look I think it opened a window and I think the window that it opened for me and that helped me change my views on bonsai was the capacity to visit bonsai exhibitions around the world yeah I was less interested in what people might have said as individuals about their own particular practice and much more interested at visually seeing the styling methods that people applied in different and different environments and and once you you know once you once you start to do that particularly looking back at the Japanese foundations that we keep on relying on but if you go and look at the exhibitions from Japan and look at the trees that are styled and you see something which is being produced which is different from that which was produced using the traditional styling models that we had in the west and so you start to say yes well I've been told for the last 15 years that this is how I should produce a bonsai and that these methodologies are based on Japanese practice and yet when I look at Japanese trees they don't look like anything like we're producing in the west yep and so for me that was a real eye opener and then to be able to look at European trees to look at American trees to look at Asian trees you know throughout Asia there's there's vastly different practices on styling and so that was the real eye opener to me that said hey what we're doing here in the west with the teaching practices that we have really isn't producing a result that has has any link to kind of that that Japanese basis in styling yeah and I mean this is a good topic to kick off on is the Australian native styling or I guess you could call it the Australian native landscape style of bonsai versus the traditional Japanese style and I will you know I've spoke many times about this on the podcast you know certain people about it's funny in in bonsai that you know you can see certain peoples expressions in their trees sometimes you can tell who owns a tree just by looking at it because of the styling in it and it's a lot like music you know different bands and different genres you can hear that distinct difference between them you know whether it was you know if a kid was brought up in a classical household you know you're going to hear that classical edge to their music whereas if you have a kid that was brought up in more of a rock and roll household you're going to have that gritty you know heavier edge to their music when they create and it's kind of the same in Australia but you know something that I'm very guilty of and I don't think it's a it's a bad thing to have but in my practice in bonsai I'm very Japanese traditional like when I style trees personally for my trees I want that Japanese aesthetic because that's originally what I fell in love with when I first started seeing bonsai was that that Japanese aesthetic and I do I've got Australian natives here and especially I've got t-trees so let us burn them Peter Sony I I've got about five of them and I've I've done them in the five traditional styles of bonsai and but they look fantastic you know they do I'm not going to say they lend themselves to the Japanese style but they do get right in if you do style them in such a way but there are those who when they look at the Australian native bonsai they see that Australian and the United Nations. and they and they style them in that such way. So I think the I think the important distinction there though is is you know what is Japanese style and you know you talk about Japanese style and styling of tree and accordance with Japanese style. I think a lot of the basis for the methodology and the styling models that have been applied in Australia and in the west since bonsai was first introduced there is a stylistic model based on a conifer design. Yep. Which is based on a black pine design. But when you look at Japanese broadleaf trees they are styled differently to that. And so there are two Japanese styles. There's a Japanese conifer style and this Japanese broadleaf style. And I think the problem we've had in the west is that Japanese conifer model or Japanese conifer styling model is the one that has prevailed. And so as a consequence we've tended to style even our broadleaf trees to look like Japanese conifers. Yeah. And that's why you see on the internet people proudly posting pictures of their ficus which are in a Christmas tree style profile, a triangular profile. Yeah. Because that's the that's the black pine triangular model. Yeah. But if you look that if you look that to the way in which the Japanese style a lot of their broadleaf trees then you would take a different approach. So I think there's there isn't one Japanese stylistic model that should apply to all bonsai. I think that's the fault and that's the flaw that's applied to bonsai introduction in the west. And I think we need to look at look at more closely at the Japanese trees and see that distinction between conifs and broadleaf trees. Well I think one of the biggest difference between you know what you were talking even between the Japanese model of conifer and broadleaf is the biggest difference I think is the the branch structure design. So with their conifers it's always branch down type design, with their broadleafs. It's branch down first but then it comes back up at the tip. I feel like with a lot of the Australian natives though it's branch up tip up. Would you agree with that? Look I think I think there's a huge a huge variability in the way in which people are styling their notifs. I think I think people as the natives get older native trees get older. I think people appreciate the values they see in aged trees and in aged native trees without any doubt the lower branches there is a bit of a kind of an s-shaped curve with an upward bend and then a downward bend and then tips up. But the lower branches definitely are down but then you have this kind of fan branching as you go. I call it fan branching and as you move up the tree the branches then become more vertical. But I think the thing that distinguishes broadleaf trees from conifer trees very clearly is that the division of a trunk occurs in broadleaf trees. So if we look at broadleaf trees in our landscape in Australia you would very very very rarely see a tree that has a single trunk that goes all the way to the very top of the tree unless they're in a forest environment where they're very tightly grown together. But any tree that's out in the open a trunk line will be divided and there will be a number of vertical elements in the tree or divisions of that trunk line. I think that's the dominant distinguishing figure feature between a conifer and a broadleaf style. And so I think people are beginning to see that in broadleaf trees and I think growing natives using a divided trunk model is a one which people can be different and can differentiate their trees from that traditional conifer Japanese model. Yeah and that kind of creates a much more dense apex to the tree and it does and it provides more variety for branching too. So if you've got if you've got a trunk line that's divided into three vertical elements within the mass of the tree and you've got six branches on each of those three vertical elements and whether those branches in some fan branched arrangement with the lower ones down and then towards the top that's 18 branches and when you've got 18 branches on a bonsai you've got a bunch of better chance of creating an illusion of a mature tree whereas you've got a single branch or a single trunk and only six branches it's much more difficult to create something that is an effective illusion of an aged tree. With that amount of density up the top of the tree especially with our tree and natives do you find it hard to keep those bottom branches in check? Well it's I think that I think good branch density is really important here a tree because that means that each of the individual branches then don't develop a mass or a weight or a diameter that is too great to throw out the proportions compared to the trunk and so if you've got a lot of fine branches and a heavier trunk again the proportions look much more naturalistic whereas if you've got fewer branches each of those branches we tend to ask that there's too much they cover too much territory they have too greater leaf load and that all feeds back into a very heavy branch on a trunk oftentimes you'll see them with branches on trees that don't have many branches you see them with those branches the diameter of the branches getting close to the diameter of the trunk and that kind of that kind of diminishes the proportions that you're looking for in a bonsai as well so having lots of branches is good for branch proportion and it's also good for kind of long-term sustainability of a design because fine branches at different times can be removed and be replaced much more easily to sustain a tree that's an older tree yeah I found over the last few years and I don't know if it's because I haven't done a ton of work with Australian natives but one thing that I have done a lot of work with is the teaturing and I find that each year well not even within a single growing season the top of the tree will get so strong that if you don't keep that in check you're going to start losing your bottom branches it just goes well we don't need these anymore let's get rid of them and the other thing that I find with the tea trees is when you do that real and probably what you're talking about here and this is me with my Japanese model mind is you know I'm refining the tree the way I would any other you know exotic species you know getting bifurcation here and everywhere and I find that almost every year to two years there's some portion of the tree that needs redesigning because it either gets out of hand or part of the tree will die off due to another part of the tree getting much stronger than than that part of it is that is that something that you you find a lot with the nannies and do you feel like you can avoid that with that styling model well you know if you've had a if you've had a practice of growing junipers and pines in the past they're quite slow growers and so once you once you start growing a mellow luca you find that they grow at a different pace and absolutely you need to keep the the apical structures in these native trees particularly things like teatrees and mellow because under control you have to continually kind of impair them to maintain the vigor of the lar branches that's for sure but the other thing that a lot of our mellow lucas do is that they're kind of very prodigious reshooters so when every time you prune them they reshoot so pruning the apex of a mellow luca only prompts it to shoot more and so you have to prune to reduce the the vigor in the apex but then you have to thin that all out and decompgest it and it's and and this decongestion process is really really an important part of growing that that type of native and the decongestion process for me is and the one that I emphasize on the way I teach that is to go back to a binary branching so at no point in the tree would you allow more than division into two and so not a division into four not a division into six which is often what the mellow lucas will do when pruning them they will shoot and produce lots of shoots really close to each other and they need to be thinned out so that you get back to this branching of two and if you do that you keep a kind of a much more open architecture in the upper part of the tree with reduced leaf load and it's easier then to keep it under control but but it is it is pruning and decongestion both of those need to be done at the same time yeah but yet they have vigorous and you need to redirect the energy of the trees to the lower branches if you want to maintain those lower branches for sure yeah well I've got an alternate foliar here melaluca and when you prune that it's almost like you get done pruning it and you go inside you have a cup of tea and you come back and you swear I just prune that yeah yeah well it is a bit like that but but so you know I'd say yes the pruning is very important but the congestion back to binary structure will help it and enable you to kind of maintain it much better yeah so it sounds like you've had more success with more primary and secondary branching and less tertiary branching yeah I think that's probably a good way of putting it yes yes so you develop your primary and your secondary again on binary basis you'd don't allow more than a division into two anywhere in the tree, and then as you get out and more ramified, it's at the ramified end that you really do need to maintain that decongestion happening, and particularly when you go through a pruning. And you know, if you have a seasonal pruning and you take and you compress the tree by cutting in further than where it might have been growing for the previous year, that will just promote it to shoot again, and you'll get such a proliferation of shoots that if you allow them all to grow, it just becomes overly congested and unmanageable. So pruning and decongestion is really an important part of the process of managing things like the faster growing native trees. Yeah. Another thing when it comes to styling with the natives, and anybody who's had their hands on natives will know exactly what I'm talking about. But are you an advocate for wiring natives or are you more of a clippin' grow type person because when you pull wire on a native, you're going to hear a snap at some point. Oh no, I don't think that's the case at all. I don't think that's the case. That's not my experience. No, I use wire. I don't think you can, I don't think you can really create a bonsai with the same level of attractiveness if you're trying to do clippin' grow because you'll end up with a whole lot of straight sections in a tree that are not correctly aligned, and particularly if you're trying to deal with a small scale tree, you really can't deal with that wiring. And so I, yeah, I prodigiously wire, I religiously wire, I can't create my bonsai without wiring, but I can't think of a species that I would, that I grow, and I've grown, I've grown scores of different genes. It's 130 different species. I can't think of anything really that has been a problem or is a problem or doesn't like wiring. Yeah. I mean, it's not in terms of that they don't like the wiring because I'm the same as you, "Oh, why are every single tree I have, I've never really clippin' growing a tree." But I've found that certain species, it's just like, they're so, like, you gotta go slowly with them, but what I have found with the natives over some of the exotic species is, and almost doesn't matter if you snap them. They just have this, I've literally had tea trees that have had branches that have snapped in the wind, and they've been dangling off the tree, and they've spent days just dangling, and then they magnify, and they harden off in that snapped off position and you think, "Well, that didn't even phase it." Yeah, yeah. No, that's true. That's true. They can survive on a fragment of bark, and I think if you've wired a bridge well, firmly wired, and if you bend it and it snaps, you need not be concerned because it will repair itself, and as long as it doesn't physically part, it'll be fine. But I kind of like to wire fresh material on the trees, so it's much more flexible, and much less prone to any kind of damage. Yeah. I think they're good trees to practice wiring on though, because you really do get the hand for it, and that slow and steady nature of, "Okay, let's just go sit here and learn how to use guy-wise," and things like that, because. That's right. Yeah. And certainly, I mean, it's not a particular use to growing ponds and geonipers, which are super flexible. You won't find that same level of flexibility with many of our native trees. And if you allow the branches to mature to any point, then they do become much more challenging to wire and to bend to get the sort of movement that you might want in them. And I think that's why I kind of. I always advocate wire really. And a lot of people talk about developing trunk mass in a bonsai by letting it grow. And I kind of. I'm a strong advocate for. yes, a tree does need to be allowed to grow to build trunk mass, but you can't let it grow without having some wire on it, because if you let it grow, you'll end up with a strong, straight, heavy section in your tree, which you only have to come back and cut out later, because it's too straight. So yes, let it grow, but put some wire in when it's young, get the movement in it in the first hundred millimeters, then allow it to grow, allow that to firmer, take the wire off, continue to allow it to grow. The small section that you wire is the piece that you want to keep in the long term. And when you come back to prune back to that area, it's got the requisite movement in it that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get into after it has grown without wire. Yeah, I think those kinds of lessons are just things that have been miscommunicated, which I mean, I guess there's nobody's fault that the information they were trying to portray was correct, but they didn't portray it properly, because like I understand, it is true that we need to keep mass on the tree to get it to grow, but we do need to do the other work at the same time. We can't just put a tree in the corner in the nursery and let it grow for 10 years and come back to it once. Come back and turn it into a bonsai, because it's not a juniper, and you can't turn a broadleaf tree into an instant bonsai. I always tell people, if you're looking for material that's mature to buy, you're always looking at tashiya gari section of the tree between the nabari and the first branch, because if there's nothing happening in that section, that's the hardest section of the tree to fix. And it's not worth a dime, unless you want a formal upright. But if that's not interesting, then look at the next tree, and if the next tree is small about it's 10 times more interesting, buy that tree. That's right. Well, I always suggest to people, look, you're much better off starting off with a tube stop, because they're ultimately flexible. And right at the very start, you've got control, whereas if you buy a semi-advanced tree, you've got a whole series of compromises that you then have to deal with. And in my experience has been, wherever I bought something that's semi-advanced, it's really just been a source of genetic material for me. So I'll take it home, and I'll create 10 cuttings for it. And those, each of those 10 cuttings in five years time will be so much better than the original tree that I would have bought, because of the compromise that you've got to make with the unconstrained growth that it would have seen in the past. So yes, you're basically just starting with something young. Okay, and for the natives, they grow pretty quickly. And in five years from a tube stop, you can create something that is just terrific, really. Yeah. I'd actually read that in your book, which you're going to talk about a little bit later, but I'd read this section where you were saying that when you're sourcing material, you can go to bonsai-specific places or nurseries, but a lot of the time, you're just going to be purchasing something that's, and like I agree with it, that sometimes when you buy older material, if it hasn't had the work put into it, you're going to spend more of your bonsai journey doing remedial work than you are doing refinement work, because you're going to get at home and you're going to have to go, well, I need to cut all these branches off. I need to trunk, you know, back to here, I need to let the new shoots. I may need to repot it, I need to do more of it, you know. And I think, and it's not necessarily an issue of the nurseries these days, but I think that bonsai got to a point where it got so popular, and there were so many people coming into the art that the nurseries lost control of what they had, where at bonsai-en here, at least anyway, we used to buy our trees off a grower, and we found the same thing. The more they were selling, the more the trees were turning up on the truck in a state where it's like, we have to keep these trees here now for a year, two years, we need to cut them back, we need to pull them out of the pot, we need to look at the state of the roots. And we need to, you know, find out, hey, is there coal grub in this pot, because that was a big issue. And all that is time and money, isn't it, it has to be added at ultimate, to the price of the tree when you sell it. Yeah, and you get natives are really good at creating those big, curled over roots that just wrap around the trunk of the tree, it's almost trying to strangle itself. You're trying? Yes. You've got to get them out and, you know, try and move them, yeah, and it's. What a remedial work. Yeah. That's what you better flooding with something young, because you can start with some movement in the trunk home, really early, and you start the root work really early, so you don't have those wraparound roots. And that's exactly what we're doing here now, where I've got a growing area. There's a couple of thousand trees in there, but they all start from small. They get. They get slip potted up each time they get slip potted up. The roots get looked out, you know, they get cut, they get the roots split out. There's movement put in them from a very young age. We make sure that, especially with our pines and things that anywhere there's going to be problem areas, gets pruned off, so there's no swelling, inverse taper, yeah, we try and keep on top of it. But I find that bonsai nurseries almost need to take the business model of less is more. Yeah, I think you're quite right, yeah. Because you're going to get much more quality out of less, whereas if you have more, you're going to get far less quality. That's right. And it just makes the customers job harder, because they've got so much backpedaling to do, you know, and. Yeah. And people then go to the nurseries, and you know, I've seen the same thing, they come to my workshops, and they've got the tree that they bought, and they're looking for some advice to what to do with it. And I said, well, you've got to cut it off, you know, 50 millimeters above the ground and reject all the material above, because the only thing you've bought, the only thing you've bought is that first 50 millimeters. The rest of it was just attached to the thing you've bought. bought and be happy with the thing you bought, but you've got five years before you can turn it into anything that's useful and you can't use the rest of it. Yeah, well, I just released a YouTube video and the lesson in the video is to try and stop people from buying bonsai material and wanting to style it in totality. So they buy a tree, it's got 40 branches on it, and they want to put wire on every 40 branch, and they just want to bend it all into place and it's like, no, you need to look at the material and you need to say, what are the good points of this material and what is absolutely usable and work around that point in the tree. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it's, you know, I talk about the happiness profile. So, you know, you you put your two hands together and make a little dome and you look at the base of the tree and you slowly move that up. And if you get to a point at any point in time where you say, well, look, I'm happy with what I can see underneath my hands, but I'm not happy with anything beyond that. That's the place where you have to prune your tree. Yeah. And remove all that material and you rebuild it in a way in which you are happy. Yeah. And unfortunately, if you've got a tree that's got a trunk that's rigidly straight and can't be bent, then, you know, that that line of happiness is very close to the debari. You need to start a nursery right on the beach so that that straight trunk thing doesn't happen. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, you know, need to do what you're doing with with some wire on something that's really flexible and get that excessive movement in an early. Yeah, exactly. Well, one thing that I found from people with Australian natives, I've heard at time and time again. And unfortunately, I've not really been the person to guide them on this. So I'd be interested to hear what you say. But I've always heard that Australian native trees cannot be repotted. Now, this is not something that I've had trouble with myself. I've had the utmost success of reporting my Australian native trees. And I've never had an issue. But I feel like there's a little bit of a misunderstanding in here somewhere. And this is probably between the exotics and the natives. But and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this because this information could be completely wrong. But my understanding of Australian native bonsai is throughout the whole entire year, they have ebbs and flows of growing. So they'll grow into almost a little bit of a dormancy period. They'll grow, go almost into a little bit of a dormancy period. And as long as you somewhat catch that native as it's in that downswing, that's a good time to do that reporting. But I've always heard, oh, you can't cut too much of the root system off, you know, say a teatry or whatever because it'll die. And all of my teatries that I've had, I've taken them from big growing pots and put them into little bonsai pots. And I've never had an issue with it. But I think there's two main issues here. One's aftercare. And I think that's one of the bigger issues. But two, and this is where I might be completely wrong. But I have experienced this myself, is a lot of the times when you just stir up a native's root system, they have this defense mechanism of dropping a lot of foliage. So that they can, they, it's almost like they understand that, hey, my source of water mobility to the foliage and to the trunk and the branches has been compromised. So I need to find a way to keep that moisture inside the branches so that they don't die off until that issue gets fixed. And then we'll continue on from there. So I find a lot of the natives, they, they, they will drop a lot of leaves. And then once that root system gets restored, then they put all that growth back on the top. Has this been something that you found or is, is that just, yeah, not, not correct information, let's call it. Uh, yeah, okay. Um, look, I think, you know, from my experience and also from the experience of, of native bonsai growers around the country, which I kind of sought out when I was putting the book together to try and provide a, I'm all balanced view rather than just my own experience. I think what I've learned from that and again, from my own experience is that, um, in the past, I have not attempted to time root printing with any cyclic or growth in the tree at all. I think if a tree has just got a fresh burst of growth, and some of our natives do have bursts of growth, and then bursts of quiet period, and then followed by another burst of growth, and then quietness. Whereas others will time a grow continuously. A lot of the mellalookas will just continuously grow. And so, um, I'll, look, I, I, I don't see, I don't see the necessity to wait for any particular time other than where there might be a flush of growth that you want to harden off before you root print. Um, in terms of time of year, you know, you kind of, whenever the tree is got a level of activity, I think is a good time to root print, although I know people also do root printing in the cooler months without any difficulty whatsoever. I think the one area you do need to be cautious of with natives in root printing is early in their lives, if they've not had much root work, and they have developed trunk roots that take a trunk root to a bottom of a pot and then spire around the pot. You need to be very cautious in the way in which you approach that, because if you randomly take a slice off a bottom of pot, you could be removing all of the feeder roots. And I think that's again, it's another message why it's important to start young with material, with young material, to do root work early to get a much more fibrous root structure happening early. And once you've got that done, then you're able to deal with them much more easily without having to be cautious about the roots. But I think that people should have a zero concern about root printing natives, zero concern about doing a significant root print on our native trees. And I mean, my practice is generally not to bear root the way you would with the deciduous tree, although for things like eucalyptus, which I grow a few up, but I know that with eucalyptus, for example, you can bear root them. You can kind of lift them out of that pot. You can shake them entirely out of all the potting media area. You can print their roots, pop them back up again, and they kind of don't bat an eyelid at that sort of treatment. In terms of foliage loss, yes, I think some people do suffer some of that foliage loss. And I think that might have a little bit to do with the regularity of the root work that's done. And so if you do root work regularly on the trees to develop that virus rooting, well, I think you won't have a problem. But if you only go back and root-prone a tree that's been growing in the same pot untouched for three years, then you've got the problem when you do the root printing of disturbing some developing trunc roots and removing too much of the feeder roots, which means that the tree then does become dehydrated and drop its leaves. But I think if you do regular root work to develop the root well, you should have no concerns about that. If a tree has been through a growth period or a flushing growth, if you are then going to root-prone it, you may want to reduce some of the foliage mass. And some people do, and some people don't, and depending on the time of year. So in the warmer months, if you're going to root-prone a tree that's had a flusher growth, you might take 20% of the foliage off. Or the fresher end of the foliage off before doing the root-prone. If it's in the cooler months, that's not necessary, something that you would do. I mean, in the book, there's a series of pictures of a mellalooka that I root-prone, and that root-proning was down in Brisbane in late March. Didn't touch the foliage of mass at all, but reduced about 70% removed, 70% left, 30% of the roots. That was the root-proning. Put the tree back in the pot, put it straight back on the bench, and within a couple of weeks it was growing strongly again. I've always been an advocate of no matter what your re-potting is, I generally don't prune any of the foliage off during the re-pot, but I make sure that the aftercare is up to scratch, not in the direct sunlight, not in a windy situation. We're lucky here with greenhouse, with automatic watering system, that kind of thing. That really ups the success rate a lot, but I try to keep as much of that oxen in the branch tips as possible, because that's what accelerates the root growth, and I find if you cut that oxen off while you're trying to re-grow roots, you're kind of almost shooting yourself in the foot a little bit, but I do understand, because I've done talks before with clubs, and I've said to them how many people were taught to prune foliage when they do a root-prone, and almost the whole room puts there. I said to them, what if I told you that by doing that, you were removing the hormone that actually grows the roots, and they were like, what? I was like, yes, but the reason that you were taught that in the early days of bonsais, because the theory was that if you remove part of that thing that creates water loss in the tree, then the tree doesn't have to rely so much on bringing water up because it's not losing it and you know it's not, it hasn't got that vacuum kind of thing going on. So you know in my teachings at least these days anyway I always teach if you can up your aftercare in a way that you can keep that moisture in the tree without having to remove the foliage, 100% you know definitely go down that path but if you're in a situation where it's like well I can't really keep it out of the wind or the sun or I haven't got anything to miss the tree with and then removing some of the foliage is definitely the way to go. Yeah all of these things are important aren't they when you're doing that job, time of year, sunshine, weather is exposed to morning sun, afternoon sun, shade during the day, what the temperature is, all of those things play a part in that that decision about what you do but you know my practice in developing trees in the past has routinely be to do both branch pruning and root pruning at the same time. So we find developing a young bonsai, allow it to have that period of growth but then prune it back which is basically beyond foliage so it's totally defoliated, pruned hard back down, lifted out of the pot, do the root pruning and put it back in the pot again and have it go again and this is with a large number of different species of native trees. Respond to that treatment quite happily and come back to life again within a short space of time and power on again without any concern whatsoever. So I think there are a wide variety of practice that you can apply in that development process but I do also know people religiously wish to separate root pruning from hard branch pruning or developmental branch pruning and there's a good argument for for separating them as well. So it's come back to the horticulture experience, the horticultural intuition that people have and I guess that's built on experience of a trialling different kind of techniques and different methodologies but the synchronization of hard developmental branch pruning and root pruning is possible but for most people I think separating those two is probably a better alternative. Yeah and I mean that's why these kinds of conversations are interesting because you hear about other people's experiences and you know how that's getting done and you can't argue with that because if it's if it's working it's working and you know for me personally it's a good thing to learn because you know while I might be doing things one way and somebody like yourself comes along and says hey well I do root pruning and I cut a bunch of branches off at the same time and the tree responds no worries. Well then now that puts me in a mind instead of hmm you know I've got thousands of trees out here I'm going to try that and see see what the results are for myself and see if I can do that. It's a little about aftercare the different sort of aftercare that's required when you do that to a tree as well of course so when they've got no leaves and no feeder roots if you keep them wet then you kill them in three days because the potting meat will go anaerobic and they've gone. So you know kind of you it's a much more cautious and much more careful and much more considered aftercare if you're doing that to trees and so you've got to keep them kind of damp but certainly not wet and you and you have to be very cautious with water until you start to see them growing again. Well this is actually a good point because this is something that I've seen time and time again where you know it's people do things to completely different to each other but they both get good results but I think more to your point it's how they treat the trees moving forward or you know how those techniques like people use different soils so you know I know people that use fully organic soil in their bonsai pots where I'm much more of an advocate of inorganic soils but I find that while for me using an organic soil in a bonsai pot is not the optimal way to go it can be done but the changes that need to be made around that person's practice are the important thing there you know whether it's how much they're watering the kind of pots that they're putting those trees in like in terms of depth or width the species whether their trees are dense or not because if you're going to go in an organic potting media you really want a dense tree so it pulls up most of that moisture if you've got a tree that hasn't got a lot of foliage on it you're probably going to run into issues really quickly and that's you know where these types of conversations really for me they open up that space in the middle because we're always taught you know okay well we go into an academic mix this and this reason and then you've got this person over here that says okay well I use an organic media for this and this reason but you miss all that stuff that they do in between that is really what makes the difference that's right that's right that's right and I think you can look at where the tree is from as well you know what is the tree that I'm growing and what's the media that this tree really needs you know I think about rainforest trees where they live in an environment where a lot of surface roots and there's a huge amount of leaf matter on the road on the ground they're prodigious recyclers of organic material so there's trees that grow in that kind of environment may well warrant a more heavy organic mix than trees that are growing in a different environment yep I think once again that that can come down to the the care of the person with the tree too because like like any tree that goes into a bonsai pot we now become there like they're relying on us for everything water nutrients you know pruning the roots that they can't do any of that stuff that they do in nature because I often hear that argument of you know there are a lot of people out there that push back really hard on acadama and I mean that's fine that they can do that thing you know I'm happy for that but the interesting conversation that that opens up that I always get is they go well a tree out in nature doesn't live in acadama and it does absolutely fine and it's like okay so we've got a tree in nature that's got a taproot that's down so far down into the water table so you know there's our first thing and we're not trying to achieve certain goals here with a tree in nature of you know smaller foliage and you know small internones and you know controlled fertilizer and all this kind of stuff you know you're getting to those kind of comments I you know to a point I actually enjoy it because it makes me think critically when I'm having this conversation and it makes me relearn all those things and why we use these mediums and yeah yeah but you know something else I wanted to throw you away with Australian natives and this is something else that I've heard over the years whether it's true or not and I think there's a conversation if it is true there's a conversation to be had in there about the the bonsai pot environment versus nature is I've always heard that Australian natives have a lower lifespan than a lot of other species that we work with you know you hear about you know so like a Japanese white pine that's 4000 years old and things like that and people say you know Australian natives you know they get to 20 years and then they just they drop off or whatever is this something that you've had experienced with and I don't know whether you've had Australian natives as bonsai for that amount of time or whether you're still coming up on that period because I know that you said it was about 15 years ago that you got more interested in the Australian natives and if it is true that they do kind of drop off do you find well do you think with your practice within Australian natives trees is that something that's more an environmental factor and do you think that they would last longer in a bonsai pot because of the constant root pruning the constant fertilizer and the other thing that I've thought about is you think about you know you say your redwoods right and they get so tall and you look at every other tree they they hit this limit of they get to this height where they can no longer bring the water up to the top of the tree because it's just the distance between the root and the apex of the tree is too much and that capillary action that that pulling nature of the water up through the tree by the foliage just runs out top of the tree dies off and then the tree kind of gets to its point do natives have a weaker tolerance to that pulling of water action or is it because you know a lot of these species like our bottle brush and melalooka they're generally born near an area that's just water you know there's just water everywhere yeah I know that's a really open-ended question but I think there's a lot of conversation to be had with that yeah I think there is too I think there is too yeah there are a lot of there are a lot of myths in bonsai out there and there's certainly a lot of myths when it comes to native bonsai but you know they're fundamentally there are only two types of trees in the world and I mean the world not Australia and those two types of trees are conifers and broadleaf trees and and the physical nature of trees worldwide are are not different. So there's no difference between Australian trees and European trees. Physiologically, they're the same. Structurally, they're the same. So how can trees in Australia be different from trees anywhere in the world? Because they aren't any different. - Yep. - And yes, we do have trees that get to be huge ages in Australia. I mean, the hero on party, you can get on a year and want to pick the leader in the pack probably is the one that will grow for thousands of years. - Yep. - I mean, every city in Australia will have a fig tree somewhere that's 400 years old. I think one of the things that does happen with Australia trees perhaps is that they don't put on the same amount of timber as some other trees that might in North America or Europe, for example. And so we look at our trees in our environment and they don't seem to be these huge massively trunked trees. And that, I think, is something to do with the fact that they don't build a lot of timber over a year. So there was a study, and I refer to it in the book talking about the amount of trunk diameter done, measured in a survey of thousands of trees in southeast Queensland over a protracted period of time looking at the additional trunk diameter per year. And it might be kind of like five millimeters. And in some trees, it might be kind of one millimeter determined depending on the circumstances. - Yeah. - So, you know, when we look at our trees, we look at them and we think they're not very old but I think they are there and they are old. It's just that they're not big heavy trees but the big heavy trees are there as well. And we do have them. And so our native trees do grow to an advanced age. The other thing I think we have to remember here in Australia is that we're a very young country and that it wasn't very long ago when people were establishing themselves here in the early days of settlement in Australia. And one of the first things that people could do to generate some cash to live was to cut some trees down. And timber getting was kind of the first industry in Australia that anybody with an axe could get involved in. And I think in those days, we lost a lot of our big old trees. - Yeah. - And what we have left is kind of only the remnants of those bigger older trees. - Yeah, I mean, I don't know where the myth comes from. Like, it's something. - I think the myth, you know, come from some kind of like, that there is some garden experience there. So there is a level of truth to it that informs that. And so there are species like Gravilla, for example, that are not long lived, probably. There are species of whottled that are not long lived. But they have a purpose in the environment as pioneer trees so that when there's a hole in a forest environment or something's died or there's been a fire, these things will come through and they'll establish a foothold and create some shade for other plants to grow. But they won't have a long life. But at the same time, there are occasions that live for three or 400 years without any difficulty whatsoever. So I think there are some things that people observe that actually fuel the myth and build the myth. But I don't think the myth is one that you can apply as a generalization to all natives. And I think if you want to grow a tree as a bonsai that will be long lived, then look for a plant that grows into a big tree. - Yeah. Because a plant cannot grow into a big tree in a short time. - Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think that's probably the. - You're going to grow a shrub. A shrub, something that grows into a shrub and you're going to turn it into a bonsai. Well, yes, you can. And you can create an interesting illusion of a tree but fundamentally, genetically, it's just a shrub. And shrubs will not have as long a life as will something that is going to grow into a large tree. - Yeah. Well, I think that's probably a good idea for your next book is. (laughing) I don't know if you've seen Michael Haggardon. - But there are websites. I mean, there are websites that record all of our big old trees in Australia. And you can go to these websites and you can see all the pictures of these trees. There are literally hundreds of them that are just ginormously huge. We just don't have them on every street corner. - Well, Michael Haggardon's got a book called a bonsai heresy where he went through it. - Yeah, exactly. - He just spelled all the myths of bonsai. - All the myths, that's right. - We need an Australian native version of that. (laughing) - Australian native myth buster. - Yeah, so. - That's what we need. - When can they be reported? Do they die of old age? (laughing) - They die of old age in the bonsai pot. But I think to your point, I think once again, there's no difference between Australian trees and other trees. And I think any tree that we grow in a pot, where we look after them, we give them water, we give them water, nutrients, we give them fresh root space. I think it's a bit like animals in zoos. They tend to live a longer life in a zoo in captivity than they would in the wild because they looked after a bit better. And I think it'll be the same thing with our trees. - Yeah, do you do much collecting of Australian natives? - I don't and I haven't. It's not an easy thing to do. My most productive piece of collecting was where there was some road work done not far from my home, where there were some hedged melulucas on the side of the road that were being dragged out of the ground. I got some great specimens out of that little piece of collecting. But as for going out into the bushland, somewhere in trying to find some things, it's much more challenging. And we don't have that kind of the feral species here. So much in Queensland, and certainly not when it comes to native selecting natives. - Yeah, 'cause I've done a little bit of collecting of some cajurina, bottle brush, those kinds of things and I've not had a lot of luck with them. So there's been some times where there's some trees that have come up that were either going to get excavated or whatever, and I've had the chance to kind of get them. And for whatever reason, I haven't been able to get them to survive the collecting process. And especially the cajurina is we had a property, we had a seven-acre property before we were here. And in the middle of that property was a creek that ran through it. And there was more cajurina that you could count. You know, there was just, and I tried, I started off with the little ones. 'Cause I thought before I move on into any of the significant ones, I'll try my luck at these little ones that are popping up. And I could not get them to survive any which way I try collecting them in every different season. I try putting them in some in straight pumice, you know, like normal collecting woolen, some I try to put them in organic, some I tried collecting most of the soil from around where I pulled it out. I put some straight in sun, some straight in shade. Every single one of those little cajurinas died. And I could not figure out what. - Did you get the hab feeder roots on them? - A lot of them did. You know, some of them we tried collecting with a lot of roots with not so many, same with bottle brush. I had an opportunity to collect some of them. A lot of them died. But then the one bottle brush that I have collected, we've got another creek on this property here. I walked past one day, seeing this little bottle brush, I just happened to grab it and I just ripped it out. And I went, let's just see, put it in a pot and off it went. And it's like, so the one that I paid no love, care and attention to, I just grabbed it by its neck and ripped it out of the tongue. - Yeah, well, I think once again, it's that question about are there any leaves on these plants when you collect them? What's the nature of their root system? Have they got feeder roots? From my limited experience, I think once again, it's really important to not kill them anaerobically once you've pulled them out and repotted them. So they've got to be in a well ventilated environment that has some moisture in there, but it's kind of relative humidity. It's moist air rather than water. And I think they needed to be in a high humidity environment. So in a plastic dome or a plastic house, where they're not dehydrating. And I think any cut surfaces on the trunk line or branches are kind of best to see a low. So they're dehydrated from those surfaces as well. I mean, I look as that I collected, it had been just kind of dragged out of the ground by a backhoe. So there were just no roots on them at all. All the branches had been hacked off. So no branches, no roots, but stumpy trunks. And I put them in the ground, which was kind of quite a sandy soil. So a really, really fast draining, quite soil. But then what they do do is they'll draw on their energy supply that's within the trunks themselves. And they will produce a flush of growth. But it's not sustainable growth until they've got roots and you run the risk of losing that very quickly, unless it's kept within a humid environment. So if you can keep them in a humid environment, and then able to get some initiation of growth, then that growth can be sustained in a humid environment without the feet of roots. For long enough, for as you say, the hormonal development of those leaves can then assist in the promotion of roots. You can't lose that first burst of growth through an absence of being in a human environment. makes sense that really does, because that last one that I ripped out, he was the first one that went in the greenhouse. Yeah, it went in the greenhouse. Yeah. Well, that's that's exactly it. You see, you've got to have them in that 100% relative humid environment. Yeah. So the, I mean, if you take a, if you take a, a cutting and you, you, you propagate a cutting in a humid environment, I've found that cuttings will grow quite happily, produce new vegetative growth, but not roots. Yeah. And if you then take them out of that environment, that new vegetative growth will just die straight away. Yeah. But if you give them long enough, the new vegetative growth, then we'll support the development of roots. Yeah. You can't do it without humid environment. Yeah. That's one thing that I like when we start to propagate and hear real quickly. Yes. Yeah. And some trees too, you know, we've got certain sections in our greenhouse here, where we have to actually separate some of the species, because some of them will actually rot really early at the base, where you've cut it. Yeah. The top of it is fine, but if you let that soil get too wet, some species they rot really quickly at the base, and then that's in its game over. Yeah. Well, see, when you're taking a cutting, the plant material is totally uncaring about what it's in. It can be an 100% organic material. It can be 100% in organic material. All it has to do is provide an environment for roots to propagate and develop. And so it's got to be a breathing environment, but it also has to have high humidity air around that part of the cutting as well. Yeah. So dry, dry is better, but not free moisture, but moisture and humidity around the base of the cutting. Yeah. Best done with, you know, a lot of people do cuttings in Perlite. Yeah. Offers no real nutritional value, but the thing doesn't need nutritional value. It just needs an appropriate environment. And then at the upper part of the cutting is in a human environment, you've got the best chance. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely right. But there's, you know, there's not much in Australian, you know, Australian native twos that trees too that will will not grow from from cuttings. Yeah. And oftentimes it's it's kind of like it's the best source that a lot of people will have to be able to collect some some native material because you only have to just kind of drive around the country in the country and you can see plenty of natives that look like attractive prospects bonsai. Yeah. The far beyond any any thought of collecting, but you can collect seeds and you can collect cuttings. Yeah. And so I always travel with ziplot bags so that I can take some cuttings and keep them moist. Yeah. Okay. Keep them hydrated. And then then at least you've got a chance of a propagating something that you do find that might be might be interesting and might be useful. And much to your point too, they grow like the clappers. Yeah. Yeah. You know, collecting a cutting or a seed is not necessarily going to slow you down, especially if you comparing your growth to a shampaku or an azalea or something like that. Exactly. You're probably going to have a bonsai Australian native quicker than you're going to have that shampaku or azalea. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good style. Yeah. It's a way to get access to the material because generally that's, you know, the nurseries don't carry a big range of natives. Yep. Which is strange. And you know, it's funny. I always hear when people come here to the nursery and they look around, they see the junipas, pines, maples, elves, you know, all your usual suspects. Yeah. And then they see an Australian native tree like a bottle brush or, you know, something that we got here and they go, oh, they can be a bonsai. And I say to them, they actually are one of the best trees that you can have for bonsai because we're not forcing them to be somewhere where they don't necessarily want to be. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they're in their environment. They, you know, they grow like mad. They're happy. They're happy. Yeah. I'll say if you're going to get a native, you need a good set of prun and cheese. That's what you need. I mean, it's an interesting point, isn't it? Because you do grow the pines and junipas and they're slow and you've got time to look at them. You've got time to think about what you're going to do next. The Australian natives, they push you. And so you've got to be ahead of the game and so you've got to anticipate what's going to happen next and have a pretty good insight into what you're going to do with what happens next. Have you got a, like, a favorite species that you've worked with so far and the innate with the names? Oh, look, you know, I talk about wherever I go and I've talked about it in the book as well, that, you know, I've discovered the dry rainforest environment. The dry rainforest environment is one where there's infrequent rainfall, but quite heavy rainfall. Yep. And so the trees generally live in a very, very dry, it's got a almost semi-arid environment. And as a consequence, they have small leaves. And once you take them out of that environment, they're very happy to have water every day in a pot, whereas they wouldn't get that in the natural environment, very happy. And they grow beautifully and small inter-nodal distances, but not too small. So the mellabrikas have got a very small inter-nodal distance. Some of these species have an intermediate sized inter-nodal distance. It might be one centimetre. It might be two centimetres, which makes them much more manageable from a development and maintenance point of view. Small leaves, kind of like Japanese box style sized leaves. And there are a number of species that have that kind of characteristic that I've got. I find a fantastic bonsai subjects, because when we think of native bonsais, we tend to think of the big four or five. So we think of the colistomons. We think of the mellabrikas. We think of the eucalypt. We think of the banks here, but there are dozens of other genus that are available to us, which have got slightly different characteristics that are also very, very good for bonsai. And so some of these dry rainforest environments and even some of the wet rainforest environments, I think there are a lot of species that are really useful. Yeah, and even within those species, there's so many branches of, you know, just your mellabrikas alone with your ulten of foliar and your lean of foliar. Well, most people in Australia have got something like 10 to 15 if not 20 mellabrikas species growing endemically where they live. Yeah, I mean, you can, you can found a collection just on mellabrikas if you wanted to and have a sufficient diversity to keep you interested forever. I've gotten photos on Instagram people sent me photos out in the bush. Well, what tree is this? And it's like, it looks like a mellabrikas, but I can't tell you which one or it looks like a tea tree, but I can't tell you which one, you know, it's, it's good. And there's lots of different characteristics. So, you know, within each species as well, depending on where they are. Yeah, bark, leaves, you know, all those kinds of things change. That's right. You know, it's even with the tea trees, you know, we've got the lemon frost tea tree here and then we've also got the pita sony eye and you know, people often ask about them, oh, what's the difference between these? And I said, well, the main difference you're going to have is how you're going to design the tree. I said, because if you're going to have a pita sony eye, you're going to need a bigger tree. If you're going to use the lemon frost, you're going to want to go for a smaller, you know, less dense design, because that's just how the leaves grow and the internoto length of them. That's right. Yeah, kind of, they look the same, but one's just much smaller. Yeah. It's understanding that's really important. And you know, it's really important in selecting a species to grow as well is what's the leaf pattern, what's the nodal pattern? And because the nodal pattern kind of determines a development path very much for nodal bonsai. Yeah. So whether the leaves are, you know, opposite or opposed or on a spiral or whatever else it either makes it more challenging or it makes it more easy, depending on that nodal pattern. Yeah. So let's talk about the book a little bit. Yeah. So you mentioned that you had your first book, which was the foundations of the bonsai foundations, yeah. So when was that one released? That was 2016. 2016, yeah. Yeah. And that came out of a teaching program that I'd been running for a couple of years up on the end, which I call, which is the same name. So it was an eight or ten times three hour training program that I was running over a six to nine month period for people. And it was, it was PowerPoint presentation based. And I encourage the students to take notes rather than give them notes, because as a process of learning. Yeah. And after a couple of years, people were saying, we really need something, Steve, you've got to write a book for us. So I sat down and put all of that material that I had into a book, which became bonsai foundations. And it is, it is very much like a textbook approach to all the fundamental things that people would need to know about to grow bonsai. Which is important. Which is important. And it really is quite unusual when you look at bonsai, bonsai books. I think a lot of people get into bonsai and they're so enamored by the aesthetic appeal of bonsai. And their idea of bonsai is I'm going to put wire on this string contorted into this shape. And it's going to be a bonsai. And it's like, no, there's so much more horticultureally going on there. That's right. That's right. There's a lot of it. I mean, just the business of our potting mix and watering. and conditions and those sorts of things are so important for people to come to groups with. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've had people have been coming to workshops with me for years and years and years and it's kind of been fascinating to see how their intuition about a lot of this will horticultural stuff is is kind of slowly developed year by year. Yeah. There's there's no kind of inspirational moments where it's all becomes apparent but it creeps up on them but it takes quite a long time. Something simple to be able to look at a tree and to understand what's going on with it and whether it's healthy or not and why. Yeah. There's those sorts of things that are kind of take a quite a long time to develop. Yeah. So now you've got this new one so the title of the new book. Australian native bonsai. Yep. So obviously you know straight away from the cover what you get yourself into there but I think it is important that we we've had this book and it's great that you've taken the initiative to do that because I think it has been a big hole in Australian bonsai practice over the last. I don't know. It's been a long time because like we spoke about before we started recording you know from my knowledge the only books that were on Australian natives up until this point where the Chorosh off ones and then we did discuss the the Len Weber book that it's snuck in there somewhere in between which I've actually never never seen it must have somehow flown under the radar but I mean even those Chorosh off books they were so small that they were almost like little pocket books they were very thin only about 20 something pages I believe. I've got both of them actually up there behind me. Yeah. But you know like we spoke about too is you know those Chorosh off books I can't remember the exact date that they came out but I believe it was somewhere in the late 80s. That's right. Yep. That they had been published. So that gap between what we've learned between them now is huge and obviously it takes a lot of dedication to write a book. I mean there's a lot of hours in there and you know for for the price that you're charging for the book that I've seen it's almost too cheap for you know for the effort that's been put in and for the for the fact that somebody's actually you know put this information together and because that that's the thing too with teaching you know I've got my online courses that we sell and and I think the biggest you know thing for people with that is I don't necessarily want to call it a selling point because it sounds like you're just trying to sell people something to get money out of them but I guess the biggest selling point of an online course is yes you can find that information online or you can go to several different workshops or demonstrations but having it all in one little package in front of you. Yeah. That's that's where the value comes from from these things. Produced by somebody who's had the experience to back up what they're saying. Yep. Over a longer period of time. Yep. Yeah exactly. The value as well rather than a lot of the stuff you see online which is kind of opinion based by people who perhaps have not had that experience and can be misleading. Well that's right and you know somebody somebody like me I've done very few YouTube videos and Australian natives but I'll always make sure that in those videos I say this is what I've heard and this is what I'm trying to practice but please do take it with a grain of salt because I'm not the guy to be listening to at this point when it comes to Australian native bonsai. Yeah. You know and how long did it take you to put the book together from because I mean I was looking I was looking at the copy of it last night and just the back of it where you note you know some of the references and things like that you think man just the research alone in something like this in getting the materials together it's it's a big task. Well it is a big task. You know I've had it in my mind to write it for a number of years so and I know I kind of deal with the information every day when I'm working on bonsai you know teaching presenting it keeps you keeps you kind of very focused on on the ideas and the concepts that are pivotal to writing a book like this so it's kind of all been in my head for a long period of time and I guess I I eventually sat down and just decided to kind of commit it to writing and I started that process in the middle of February yeah so since mid-February through it all now it's almost kind of been a three quarter full time job. Yeah so it takes it takes a lot of time but there are a lot of steps in that process a huge number of steps but yes there's there's there's writing the book there's collecting the information I mean collecting all of the illustrations it's creating the illustrations I mean all the sketches that I put together to try and illustrate some ideas about Australian style and native styling all had to be drawn yeah so it took yes it's a big task. Do you already feel like you need to release part two? I kind of almost feeling like I don't want to go near part two. I know there's been certain things that I've done whether it be YouTube videos or courses and then you watch the lessons back and there might be like that one little thing. I'm going to go back and do this. Yeah man I wish I had of just mentioned that one little thing alongside that and all that happens. The next the next job will be go back to bonsai foundations and and create a a subsequent addition of that where I bring it up to speed again so that the messages between the two books are I kind of compliment each other well. Yeah because I'm finding as I as I'm sending some of these books out the Australian native bonsai after people who are buying them they get the book and they have a look and they say now tell me about your your other book and I kind of give them some information about the other book and it's kind of resulted in lots of orders for bonsai foundations as well. Yeah which I think there's there's a whole lot of different lessons in there that people can learn but I think it kind of can do with a little bit of a review and a revision after eight years so that'll be the next task I think. But I was going to write this book because in part because of all of the myths that there are around natives that need to be dispeled and there was nothing in writing that kind of dispelved a lot of those myths. Things like can they be wired? How should they be developed? The old business about the root printing, the the potting media, all of those kind of things. So I thought that needed to be addressed but I was also very keen to address the question of style and an Australian style and emerging Australian style and how should we style our Australian natives and I think people who are native bonsai growers kind of appreciate that there is an opportunity for them to style them differently from the traditional models. Wherever I go and have had those kinds of discussions with people in clubs inevitably they find it kind of a very refreshing approach or most as if they're being given permission to do things differently and again appreciate that there's some basis behind a different approach to broadleaf trees particularly broadleaf native trees and so I've tried to establish a whole series of stylistic models in the book which might enthuse people to look at their bonsai little differently and take a different approach to the styling of them. Yeah I mean it's great that you took all this information and put it on the pages because you'll probably find that you know somebody like me when you put yourself out there and you put this information out there there are there is a lot of pushback on certain things and it takes a certain kind of person to be able to say you know what this is how I do it this is the information I've learnt this is what works deal with you know kind of thing because I mean I get it all the time on YouTube you know I'll do a tree or whatever and I'll get somebody little come on there flat out tell me I'm wrong yeah yeah but you look at the tree weeks later months later that's wrong and it's like that did it die did did it do exactly what I said it was going to do in the video did it reshoot in this way did it grow in you know you know that there are there's a billion different ways to do these things you know I you know I always say to people with you agree with somebody or you don't agree with them learn their way because it's going to teach you something about your way that's wrong that's wrong learn from everybody and you will get the biggest amount of you know knowledge and you know I think the day that you stop learning bonsai is the day that you stop doing bonsai yeah yeah for sure there's so much information out there that's wrong yeah yeah yeah so for people that want want to acquire a copy of the book how how do they go about getting it by sending me an email at Australian known at [email protected] yeah I'll put that in the show notes as well so they can they can just copy that and then we can kind of go through the you know the banking and details address details, all of that sort of thing. And out of interest is this book going to be available to people internationally? I'm looking at avenues for doing that at the moment and with modern printing technology, it is possible. I think as I said right at the beginning to do print to order. And so yes, in principle, it is possible so that somebody in America could visit a website and place an order for a book. We printed locally for them and we delivered to them locally. So I did the same thing with the first book and I've, you know, sold quite a fair number of books internationally of that version to be in that same way. I mean, you can even send physical copies from here. You can send physical copies as well. Yes, you can and, you know, that's quite an attractive, attractive way for people to get access to it. Yes, because we sell the Koroshov book at once I am and you'd be surprised at how many people overseas buy that book. Well, you know, I had a conversation with the folks at the curatorium at the in Canberra at the Australian National Collection. Yeah. And the number of copies of the Koroshov book that they sell there is quite astounding. Yeah. And it's a very, there's a small size collection and come out and go to the book shop and buy the Koroshov book quite quite a surprising and again, particularly given the level of information and the amount of information and the book that's kind of really useful for for modern day practices. It's just surprising how well it does sell. Well, it's funny because when we sell it here, the margin on that book is not very high for us. And there's a few things that we've sold here at Blancayan that are more for the customer than it is for us. And that book is one of them. So every now and then we'll do a run of that book where we'll bring them in. The last run I did was probably two months ago or three months ago, something like that. I brought in 20 copies. Yeah. They got here at the nursery at 11 o'clock. We'd sold them all out by just after 12. Well, let's not bad, even with the thin margin. 20 copies going out the door, a lot of them went overseas. A lot of them went to New Zealand. It was actually funny because I do Zoom consultations with people. You know, they'll ask me, oh, you know, styling a tree or whatever. And we'll just do it over Zoom like we're doing now. And I actually had a guy from New Zealand the other day. And we were talking about his tree and a specific style to do this tree. And I said, oh, I said, there's a really good illustration in the car shop book. I said, let me just grab mine and I'll show you this illustration. And I put it up to the camera and I showed him. And I said, oh, this is just a great illustration of that style. And blah, blah, blah. I said, we don't have any at the moment. I said, but if they ever do come back up for sale on our thing, grab yourself a copy. And he picked it up and he said, this one. I said, I already got the book and he goes, yeah, I bought it from you. Yes, yes. So, yeah. Because when I was kind of writing the book and I was thinking about that international thing, I thought, well, you know, it's a book about Australia. And I was, how much interest would there be international anyway? But I mean, you've just dispelled that myth, I suppose. Yeah, but there's still whether they have those species or not, there's still good information in there that. Yes, of course. Like you can learn from everybody and they can still take some of that and learn from their tree. Yeah. Yeah. Like, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, we watch people from, like even the styling cues that they can take from it. You know, you look at the styling that they do in India or Vietnam or, you know, they're, their worlds apart. You can learn from everybody whether you're using the species that they're using or not. Yeah, just one of those things. Yeah, that's quite true, quite true. All right. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on here today. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Josh, thank you very much. It's been great to have that chat about Australian natives. And, you know, I look forward to sitting down and reading this book more. I did go over it, you know, a bit, but it's going to take a while to sit down and get through all the pages and get all that information sunk in. And it's going to take more than one read, I think, to achieve that. But we should have another chat one day after you've read it. Yeah, that'll be interesting. I'd like to like to get some feedback from you. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know how good my feedback would be in terms of, because it's one of those things again, like you don't know what you don't know. So, you know, I, you know, it's always, it's always interesting because, you know, I'm part of the reason for writing it also was to kind of challenge people's understandings. And I mean, this conversation today has already done that. Yes. And I think this conversation today and for anybody that's listening, if they're thinking about buying the book, I think the small amount of information you've given us today compared to what's in your book. That's, I mean, that's telling you to buy the book straight away because, you know, it's like if you can get this much information for free than what's in the book. Yeah. You know, so absolutely. No, thank you, Josh. But stick around for five minutes, because there's some stuff that I want to talk to you about. But absolutely, thank you so much for coming on here today. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's been great. No worries. Okay.