If you come from Scotland, anything over 20 degrees centigrade is considered too hot. We’re not built for hot weather, however the trees love it and respond by putting on lots of new growth, which has to be kept in check regularly with the pruning scissors. This is a task I enjoy at a leisurely pace as it lets me study the trees in close detail and plan my restyling work for the Autumn. Heres a view of my display area for larger trees for the benefit of those who only follow me on my WordPress blog (my Facebook followers will have seen this already in recent weeks) followed by a few detailed ..read more

This is an update and expansion of a post first published in 2019 Forsythia is one of my favourite garden shrubs, the yellow glow of their flowers on bare stems in Spring is magnificent. Although they are still quite rare as bonsai, when you do see one in flower you can’t fail to be impressed by them. I had been looking for some suitable material to start one for some time and in 2018 I was able to remove the specimen you see in the following pictures from a friend’s garden. The next 2 pictures show the tree at the end of its’ first season in a pot. In a single season it had filled this 9 inc ..read more

Everyone likes a good before and after sequence and this is one of my best. This post plots the journey of one of my shohin hawthorns from the proverbial stick in a pot to a prize winning bonsai in 6 years. The original material was collected from my garden in 2008. I didnt do much to it, apart from water and feeding until 2012. It was then I decided to chop some of these trees back  to develop them as shohin trees. Shohin trees are those between about 5 and 9 inches. The first picture shows the first chop in 2012. This had the effect of throwing out new buds further down the trunk 2 yea ..read more

With an increase in the daytime temperatures some of my small trees are beginning to wake up from their winter sleep Her are some pictures of the ones that have been re-potted this year. Acer Palmatum Deshogo shohin Acer Shishigashira Chojubai Quince shohin Old Yamadori Hawthorn in a new Ian Baillie pot 2 more homegrown shohin Hawthorns 2 shohin trident maples. Both these trees suffered a bit last year, each losing a good lower branch due to the long cold winter but they are looking much stronger this year. My 2 Zelkovas are usually the last of my trees to leaf out. the buds are swelling ..read more

I collected this Scots Pine on land belonging to a friend in 2015. The original tree stood about 2 metres high and I cut it back while still in the ground about 2 years before I collected it. This had the effect of generating a lot of useful back buds lower in the trunk.When I lifted the tree from the ground most of roots were very long and thick and unuseable, there were very few  around the base of the trunk. When I got the tree home I planted it in the large pot you can see in the first picture. For the first year after collection it was touch and go whether it would survive or not. I ..read more

A few years ago, at one of the Bonsai Europa events I purchased this material from a Spanish trader. It was a field grown cotoneaster with a very thick trunk. A trunk would take decades to become this thick in the Scottish climate; I can only assume that they grow much quicker in the warm Spanish climate.The first 2 pictures show how it looked when I acquired it. They were clearly developed with air layering in mind.   the first thing I had to do was to remove the moisture retaining organic soil and replace it with a more free draining mix of akadama and kiryudama.The next 3 pictures il ..read more

This is a good example of what can be achieved in this hobby with time, patience and very little expenditure. It is an ungrafted acer palmatum with small leaves that I bought in 2012 for £1.00 in an end of season sale at my local Tesco supermarket. The first picture shows the tree in the Spring of 2013. All the old organic growing medium had been removed and it was repotted in a plastic training pot with a mixture of akadama and kiryu. In 2014, I put the tree into a large pot and fed it with High Nitrogen fertiliser for a couple of seasons. My purpose in doing this was to allow a sacrifice br ..read more

Hi, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on my wordpress blog but that is set to change in the coming weeks.Some of my followers may have noticed that I’ve recently revived my Facebook bonsai Page Robert Nocher Bonsai. The Facebook page is great if I just want to share a phone picture of  some of my trees but it’s not so good if I want to tell more of a story about a trees development over time. So with that in mind I will be using both platforms to share information about my trees. If you only follow me on WordPress but not on Facebook, you may want to like my page inorder to keep up with ..read more

Today, I re-potted this tall Blaauws Juniper into a nice Ian Baillie drum pot. When I acquired this tree in 2016, it was in poor condition as the previous owner had died and the tree had been neglected for a few years. This is how it looked at that time. By September of 2018 it had recovered sufficiently to begin some work on it. This is how it looked after the fist styling The new look required a change of planting angle and a new pot. The re-pot was carried out today. This is how it looks at the moment. A few more seasons to develop the foliage and the deadwood and this will be a really n ..read more

Today I spent some time re-potting the Scots Pine that was rewired over the winter. It also required a slight change of angle. This is a reminder of how it looked before todays’ work. And this is how it looks at the moment in a new Chinese drum pot, which is more in proportion with the tree. Here it is again, almost complete and back out on its’ plinth ..read more