Syed Abbas has spent four years transforming his Stratford garden into a Japanese-inspired space with three koi ponds, bonsai trees, and a tea house shed. He started bonsai in 2020 and evolved the water feature from a small stream for goldfish into progressively larger ponds after visiting koi shows.
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Well, welcome to a wonderful summer's afternoon in Stratford, East London, in the garden of Syed Abbas, one of my apprentices. So without any further ado, I'm going to introduce you to Syed, and he's going to take you through some of the, the history of this garden, and we'll have a little look around.
Hi, I'm Said Abbas. I've been doing bonsai for 4 years now, since 2020, and that's when I'd done an apprenticeship.
So we've had a look around your garden this morning, mate, and it's just absolutely fantastic. But it's, um, you only started the garden 4 years ago. What was it like when you, you started?
So I started in 2021, so it's coming up to about 2, 2 and a half, 3 years. Um, it was literally grass all the way. Um, well, obviously my dad loves the lawn, but But then the lawn is hard to maintain, so it became muddy. So I thought, you know what, I need to take over. And that's when I started thinking about what I want to do. I was quite inspired by Japanese gardens. Obviously doing bonsai as well, you're going to bonsai workshops, shows, and then visiting Japanese gardens as well, which is really helpful. And I took my inspiration from there.
And we've worked together at a few koi shows, and I'm guessing That's where some of the inspiration for finally digging out a pond. Now, we've spoken over the years and you're on your 3rd pond, I think. It gets bigger and bigger.
It can only get bigger. So with the pond, initially it was going to be a stream that runs from one side of the garden to the other, and then a friend of mine who loves ponds, fish tanks, gave me the idea of building a pond. I was a bit reluctant at first because Because I know there's quite a lot that goes into it. But then I just bit the bullet and dug myself a pond. So it started off really, really small. I didn't want to get koi at first. It was all about goldfishes. But then when I went to koi shows, that's when I saw koi and I was like, right, I really want to get into koi. And then the koi came in, the pond grew, and now it's what it is today.
And now the pond area, and you've got the bridge going over the water has become a central part to your garden. Yeah, I mean, your garden's something of a jungle. We've all been talking about that today, with the ponds as a central feature, and obviously you've got the fish. Yeah, and then you have your trees kind of set up around the ponds.
That's right. So I wanted to split the garden in half, so at the front I'll have all my benches and I showcase my trees, and at the back is where all my growing stuff, things that I'm trying to grow and stuff. So the pond kind of breaks that into 2 halves, and that's where my owls are as well. It's kind of breaking up the garden.
Yes, because you are famously also known as Owls and Bonsai on Instagram. That's right, because you have the owls in the garden as well. Now you've built a walkway at the side of the garden so you can actually get to the bottom of the garden quite quickly. That's right. And it gives some really nice views across your garden, doesn't it?
Yeah, um, yeah, again, Japanese garden, it's all about having viewpoints, um, so having that pathway really helps capturing it. And you don't want to reveal too much because that's why I've got the screening. So it's all about finding a place and looking at different viewpoints from the garden.
And so if I pull back, uh, the camera a little bit, we can— and I'll move the camera around A little. We actually have your, your mum's new shed, garden shed, which you've been building this summer, and it is absolutely fantastic, um, looking like a Japanese tea house. And that's— you spent crazy amounts of time building that this summer.
I spent my summer holidays, um, doing this. So initially it was going to be a tin can. Obviously that's not going to really reflect the rest of the garden, so I took it upon myself I spent my whole 6 weeks building this, and it's finally there.
Well, thank you very much for inviting us today. We, uh, got all Bonsai for Me apprentices, and I think we're gonna have a barbecue very soon. Thank you very much, Syed.
