We're here with bonsai expert Mark D'Cruz. You're joining us Larry Lamb as well.
Interested in bonsai trees?
I'm fascinated by them,
Fascinated by them.
Welcome to the show. You're a bonsai expert and you've been running Ma-Ke Bonsai school.
How many branches does that have?
We did not just go there.
No one would forgive me if I hadn't done that.
So what makes you a bonsai expert? How long have you been doing this for?
Well I've been growing bonsais for about 30 odd years but as a professional
about seven years ago, I decided that I'm going to take this on as a lifetime profession.
So this is a career for you.
It is now a full-time career for me and I teach students how to grow bonsais.
So basically, what exactly is it? Does it just have to be a small tree in a small container?
What are the rules of bonsai?
The rules about bonsai is that the bonsai should look like a tree.
When you've made your bonsai look like a tree you've reached the pinnacle of bonsai.
So it has to look like a tree.
If for some reason it looks contorted or doesn't look quite right in the pot or in its surrounding,
or in the story that you're trying to tell, we're not yet there. We still have to carry on.
The story?
Every bonsai tells a story.
This one, for example, is telling a story that it's leaning over a riverside.
You can see it's called a cascades target. It's leaning over a riverside.
It's on a mountain, on the bank, and its leaning over the riverside.
This one has had some sort of accident happen to it. The inside has been carved out and it's on a ...
The one at the end is growing by the seaside. It's been blown in and buffeted in by the weather.
But they're created to look like this. They don't look like this originally.
No they don't.
Does it start from a tiny, tiny when it's just beginning to grow, from a seed?
Do you start right from the beginning?
You could start growing it from seed or you could wait 30 years before you begin to see the fruits of it.
The better option is to collect one or go to a bonsai nursery and get what we call pre- bonsai.
It's stock for bonsai where the nursery man has grown it a long time
before it's ready to be bonsaied.
So how big does it have to get before it's considered not to be a bonsai?
Because this looks very big to me.
I would have thought bonsai was much smaller like the one in front.
Well, there are many ways of measuring bonsais, of classifying bonsais.
Some people, there's one school that says, if it takes one person to carry it, it's a one-man bonsai.
For something like this, you can just about get away with carrying it with one.
That one, on the other hand, requires two to three people to carry it for example,
so it's all about, that's one way of classifying.
The other way, of course is how it's grown.
This is a cascade style.
This is grown in the broom style,
and that one is grown root over rock because it's sort of a mountain.
So how do you do it then? How do you make them shrink?
Sorry, not grow.
I don't like the word shrink, but you keep them smaller by pruning them,
is the real art of doing it and by pruning the roots.
So not only are we controlling how much food that it's allowed to to utilize,
if you put this back in the ground, it'll be, well this one will grow to be a 30 metre tree.
So you miniaturize it.
I like that word, miniaturize.
So, if that's buried there, how do you get the roots? Do you have to lift it and go under it?
Yes, every couple of years in that case because that's another old tree.
Every five years you'd take it out of the pot and you prune it all around
so there is no long entangled roots inside it and then you feed new fresh soil into it.
So you sort of control its growth, literally.
So that's miniaturized the leaves and everything.
So if you left it, it would just get bigger and bigger and it will all become the normal size.
Yes.
So are the leaves smaller as well?
The leaves also shrink with time, with age on the tree. That's quite an old face so...
How old is this one?
It's about sixty years old.
Wow!
So these leaves would be three, four, five times the size, yeah?
Those leaves are about about four inches, 10 centimeters.
Right, like 20 times the size.
Yes.
I've seen it at Kew, because that's a Chinese Elm and it's quite,
you don't normally get to see it around but I 've seen them at Kew and they're about ...
Is this Japanese originally?
No, the Japanese have brought it to the rest of the world but it's actually originated in China
and they started growing them as gargoyles so they had them, they called them green dragons
and they put them in front of the house to ward off evil spirits and that's the way it started.
But it's been in China for over a thousand years or more
Why don't they die when you keep chopping away at the roots?
Plants are autonomous creatures.
They can live off, if you cut off one branch and stick it in the garden, more often than not,
it will survive, so plants have that ability to survive with that
and that's the ability that we use in bonsai. We use those very traits of plants to help them
grow in the style that we want them to.
Do they reproduce in a miniature form?
No. if you leave it by themselves, they will revert to being full-size trees
because the genetics is in the tree.
You can't change the genetics, well maybe sometime, but at the moment you can't
so if you put it back into the ground, it will become a full size tree.
You just physiologically manage the size of the tree.
How much maintenance does it take because I could probably kill a fake plant
so I'm assuming I wouldn't be very good at this. Does it take daily, weekly, watering, pruning?
It does take a little bit of commitment to the tree, let's put it that way,
but a lot less than you would have for a pet and any other child for example.
How many years have they been doing this for then?
I'm sorry?
The Chinese, when they started. How many years ago?
Over a thousand years.
Over a thousand years. And how old is the oldest bonsai trees do we think?
Well as far as we know, the oldest bonsai in existence is with the Japanese Emperor and
he's had it for 500 years in his generation and when he got it, that particular shogun,
it was already 200 years old. So we say about 700 years.
Wow.
I know for example, my own teacher, his teacher has a bonsai which is dated at
a thousand years old so there are trees that are ...
And what's the price range of these things if you want to buy one?
From 15 pounds to 15 million if you like.
15 million!
What! What's the most expensive bonsai you've ever come across?
I've ever come across? Nothing even in the million range because that's the Japanese side.
So does it have a meaning?
The word, bonsai. Does it have a meaning? Does it mean anything?
Literally it means, plant in a pot.
Plant in a pot.
It's as simple as that. The Chinese version of penjing which is a landscape in a pot.
Right
Fantastic, and do you think they enjoy being kept small?
I think so, I really, really do think so because they talk to me, let's put it that way,
every time, and I'm talking back to them.
Oh no sorry, I'm not having that.
Let's put it the other way around. Do you see any of them that is grumbling to you?
Oh listen, thank you very much Mark.