In this field video Harry Harrington returns to his favored hill to collect a wild (yamadori) hawthorn for bonsai. He explains why the site – a moss‑rich grassland with poor, shallow soil and heavy deer grazing – produces small, characterful trees with excellent bark and deadwood. The optimal collection window is late winter to early spring when buds are swollen. Harrington and his assistant Paul demonstrate the full workflow: selecting a suitable tree, using a specific set of tools (synthetic and metal root hooks, pickaxe, secateurs, handsaw, hand chainsaw, sturdy gloves), trenching around the root ball, carefully cutting and preserving fine roots while cutting through thick lateral roots, and finally bagging the root ball, protecting the trunk with plastic, and preparing the material for potting the next day. Throughout, he offers practical tips on avoiding damage, handling thick roots, and managing the delicate balance between root preservation and extraction efficiency.
Chapters
So today I'm returning to the hill, my favourite spot for collecting Yamadori hawthorn and blackthorn. My video of a similar collecting trip up onto the hill in January turned into something of a disaster as I lost the light halfway through the dig. However, we're now in March and we have much better light later on And I have Paul with me taking the footage. This is a special place, somewhere I've been walking for 5 years now, and some of the largest hawthorn are also incredibly old. My journey up the hill takes me out onto a grassland plain that is thick with sphagnum moss, with deer tracks running through it. Small clumps of hawthorn have managed to eke out an existence in the shallow layer of soil These trees are kept small by virtue of the very poor growing conditions, lack of moisture, and repeated grazing by rabbits and deer. For this dig, I'm going to be collecting in a small area of woodland where the trees tend to be quite leggy but have excellent bark and deadwood features for use as bonsai. The very best time to collect hawthorn is as the winter buds start to color up, which is in February onwards in the UK. As you can see, the buds here are nicely swollen, meaning that this is a great time to collect. The tree I'm going to be collecting today was chopped in the autumn and it's just starting to bud out. It's relatively small but has an outstanding trunk for bonsai And we'll have a new branch that's grown onto it.
Right, so if you look at the base of that trunk where it's got loads and loads of deer damage, and this probably happened in the past couple of weeks.
I think they're rubbing their horns.
Yeah, could be.
This area of the wood has previously been chopped down by the landowner. Unfortunately, these trees tend to be too weak to survive collection, mainly due to the repeated grazing by deer. However, this grazing does create some incredible ramification. So these are the tools I use for collecting trees.
So this synthetic root hook and metal one, that one doesn't damage the roots. Pickaxe for the stony soil, secateurs, newly sharpened handsaw which can also go into the ground, hand chainsaw for cutting down trunks and also cutting through thick roots. And a pair of very sturdy— 2 pairs of very sturdy gloves.
Okay.
Yeah, so this is a tree that I cut last autumn, and the sap's risen and it's popping new buds all over the trunk itself. You can see where I've half cut through the cambium rather than actually taking the whole thing down. Does make removing the tree easier later on. The idea is, is I'm going to cut a trench around at least 1 foot, 1.5 foot, all the way around. I won't take that much of the root ball home, but I want to keep as many of the fine roots as possible, so I'll Start digging, and when I come across a thick root with my spade, I can then dig into the soil and cut through. Hopefully, because the root ball is going to be very shallow, once I've cut all of these lateral roots, the whole thing should come out fairly easily.
That's the spin.
What's up?
It's definitely where you buried her, yeah.
Right, you're on? So I've got the metal root hook just starting to pull the soil away. Around the trench. And a lot of the time it's focusing on the, the trench because you know that the lateral roots will be growing outside. When you find one, just cutting through. And I suspect the root comes from that tree, not this one.
But—
See if the tree will wobble.
Yeah, but it'll be trapping this one.
Just stay out here a little bit.
Yeah, it was before.
This is a technique I use for cutting through thicker roots and is particularly useful for cutting heavy roots under the root ball.
It's getting the chain underneath. There it is. Quickest way of getting through a thick root. I'll cut this bit out where I kind of open my hands. It might be a root from another tree, not this one, but Never cuts all the way through.
That's snagging.
No, because, um, yeah, I was gonna say it's too close then, isn't it? So finish off with the saw here. Yeah, which is here by my foot.
Thank God you're here. Nothing exciting's gonna happen. I've got to find— there's going to be another thick root somewhere.
So what you're sort of looking for is some really big thick wood?
Yeah.
Cool.
See, I want to try and avoid touching these fine roots. I don't really want to mess with them, not too close to the trunk. Sometimes you've got to.
What I'm nervous of, and I've told them, is talking about the value of the trees. And I said to him, if you go to an orchid collector or somebody that's got a coin pond, you don't start asking them.
Sometimes I can free up a much larger tree in just half an hour. But this one had a downward-growing taproot that was difficult to find, which made it a long dig until I finally located it.
It's out!
The root ball and the soil are then securely bagged up for the journey back home. This will stop the roots drying out in Until the tree is potted up in the morning.
What I'm also going to do is put some plastic around the trunk itself to protect the bark and the, uh, the buds that are coming out. Right, that's the job done.
The following morning, the tree is potted up into Please see my video from earlier in the year for further details of potting up Hawthorn Yamadori. Finally, the newly collected tree in its new home for the next couple of years. Here you can see the full detail of the deadwood and live veins on the trunk created over many years by the grazing deer. The tree is covered with a black bin bag and placed in my polytunnel to create maximum humidity. Far from being complete, this is now an excellent start as a bonsai and can have an entirely new branch structure grown onto it over the forthcoming years.
