Interview With Harry Harrington

Welcome back, Novari TV. Um, today we're with a very special guest and a good mate of mine. Harry Harrington. Harry, thanks for having us back, mate.

You're welcome, mate. Good to see you.

It's always good to be here, brother. Um, Harry, what have you been up to since, since, uh, we last saw you? I know a lot's been going on, mate.

It's been incredibly busy this year. Um, when we first went into lockdown, I wasn't sure what exactly what was gonna happen. Um, all my demos, workshops lined up for the year had just were cancelled straight away, obviously. And then all of a sudden, I would— the number of commissions I was being given from people who were stuck at home in their own garden, wanting to enjoy the bonsai more, they have more time to work on the trees, and they were just investing in their trees far more. So the amount of work I've had has just been incredible. And it seems to be yet to peak. The number of trees that are coming into the garden and then going out, either as sales or as commissions, just been incredible. It's literally nonstop.

Yeah, I have noticed actually, Harry, that you've got a lot going on. I've noticed the amount of trees you've got around, in and out constantly. Something's on the move. You're always doing a commission for somebody.

Yeah, seems so.

And your Instagram's going bonkers. Yeah, how are you keeping up with everything, mate?

Uh, it's difficult. I'm getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning, um, and then about 9 o'clock in the evening I just, I've got to quit because I've still got family at home, uh, partner, and I've got to do something else sometimes. It is difficult to keep up with everyone, and I, I always have this kind of this guilt when people will write to me with whether it's in terms of business or just simply asking me questions, and I simply can't keep up with it. And in this day and age, I've got, um, so many followers on Facebook and Instagram. In each of those social media platforms, we'll have 3 or 4 inboxes, and it can be impossible to keep up with everything. But sure, I'm trying my best.

Having said that, where did it all start, mate? How did you get into bonsai?

Um, God, I was in my 20s, my late 20s, and I discovered that I was very good at gardening. I was doing a lot of garden design, landscaping, and then just before I hit 30— so this is 20 years ago— I broke my back, and that was my gardening time over and done with, really. And I had 3 or 4 years where I was just recuperating, and that's where I kind of— all the notes and the learning that I already had written down, plus my own experience as a gardener, which goes back to my childhood. I grew up— my mother is a fanatical gardener, and I have a lot of knowledge since I was a kid, and I just applied it to bonsai, which had previously just been a hobby. And around a year later, 2001, um, about 18 months later, about 2001, I started putting together bonsai for me. And it was something just to, to make use of my time while I recovered from the back injury.

Yeah, I actually, I want to get on to that because like you've said, you started, um, bonsai as a hobby over 20 years ago now while working as a gardener. Do you remember what that seed was that planted— how, how did you come across bonsai exactly?

Yeah, um, for me it was going to— as a gardener, I was going to RHS flower shows, and the presence of the, uh, the bonsai exhibits absolutely fascinated me. And I still think to this day, you know, the people who are going out and they're showing at the RHS shows They may not get the coverage on the television and in some sectors of media, but they make a fantastic impression on people. And that was when I really started soaking it up. And it was building a Japanese garden for someone, oh, it must be around '96, '97. And seeing these gardens, these bonsai in the garden day after day while I was down there working, and, and building the garden that I really just fell in love with this idea, the concept of having, um, plants or trees in a pot that I could just pick up and move around as opposed to planting trees out in— into a flower bed.

And, um, do you remember what the bonsai scene was like? Where did you go for inspiration?

For me, it was, um, the bonsai magazines.

Hmm.

I've never been the sort of person to go and join a club, um, and in fact, the first time I went to a bonsai club was probably 11, 12 years ago when I started actually conducting workshops and doing demos. But I'm an avid reader and I bought every book, every publication possible. It tended to be in the sales section of garden centers and just read everything I could get my hands on. And then we had the advent of— around 2000 was when I first got online, and we had all the text-based forums and a lot of ideas from all over the world just traveling around back and forth and back and forth. And these are in the days where I think people were on dial-up modems, so Forums didn't tend to use graphics or images. Everything was text-based, but there was so much information going around. It was fantastic. It was a revelation.

Amazing. And do you remember what your first bonsai was and where did you get it from?

I can't remember, to be quite honest with you. I mean, I did I did what most people do, which is, you know, I had thin trunks in a pot, and they would be called sticks in pots by now. And, you know, that's almost a term of derision these days. And I still see people saying this on forums and putting someone down because they present a cheap Chinese blue pot, octopus blue pot, And a very thin young tree in there, and they'll, they'll give them hassle for it. But I still remember the thrill I had. And I think one of the first trees I had was a privet, um, and it's just the fact that it was growing and it was doing what it's supposed to, but in a pot that I could pick up. And I haven't forgotten that thrill. And I think it annoys me when I see people People, um, coming down on beginners and trying to spoil that thrill they get. And we shouldn't forget, forget these things. We shouldn't embrace them.

When it comes to bonsai, we hear of artists being very good at creating conventional bonsai, but it's well known, um, that you specialize in raw material and turning raw material into works of art. And particularly, you enjoy the challenge of styling unsuitable material for bonsai. Where did this approach come from?

Um, I think a lot of it was I had limited resources, having broken my back and not being able to work, but I had a lot of plants around me and I wanted to, I wanted to do bonsai. I wanted to develop trees, and I couldn't go out and buy raw material or finished trees— not that there's anything wrong with that. So I took the hard route, and the hard route is getting a stump, putting it in a pot, getting it healthy, and then just trying to make something beautiful out of that. And I quickly learned over there, you know, there's The following 2 or 3 years that you don't need to adhere to the rules. You don't need to adhere to the rules to create something that's beautiful or something that you can appreciate. And I just dismissed, dismissed the rules after a while. I just thought they were slightly ridiculous. However, I do think the rules are an excellent way of being able to learn to read a tree, to to break down a design. But once you've broken down that design and you can really genuinely understand it, you can then take your designs and become innovative. But it was the Internet Bonsai Club, the IBC, was the big forum back in the early 2000s, and people were able to post pictures, and you had some great artists on there posting their trees, their development images. And I would see countless arguments, silly arguments. People would have this fantastic-looking tree and someone else would come along and they would dismiss it. Oh, you need a branch here, or this branch is incorrect, or this is incorrect, or this is incorrect. And there was a lot of that nitpicking that does go on. Um, and it was Walter Paul started posting on there. Um, Walter Paul's a fairly well-known artist, naturalistic style, and he would put a picture, a picture of a tree up and you'd go, wow, that was so— the impact was just powerful. And that was your first instant, was this is a really good tree. But then you would look at the technically, and you say, no, no, I just meant there's bar branches on here, this, this is wrong, this is wrong, this doesn't work, you can't do that. So if you broke down the trees that he was designing, the tree in theory was bad, but that impact you got was so powerful.

Yeah.

And that was where I started to realize that The emphasis that we can have too much on, uh, where a branch emanates from on the trunk rather than what's far more important is branch taper. Um, ramification is great if you have a lot of ramification on the tree, but it's not as important as branch taper. That whole concept of having a substantial or reasonably substantial trunk, some thick primaries going out to The finest, finest tertiary branches. I'm talking about deciduous trees here, but the outer way, the tertiary branches in comparison to this heavy trunk, all in the distance of, you know, 50 centimeters. That contrast is bang. That's— that kicks you in the balls.

Yeah.

And it's far more important than whether the branch is barred or—

Yeah, yeah.

And it's reassessing the, um, the way we look at bonsai. Yeah, I think there's a lot of clichés, you know, make your trees look like a tree rather than a bonsai. It's all part of our learning experience.

Sure. Well, you've touched on internet forums and how that was a fundamental part of the early days in you developing in bonsai. And, you know, we know in 2000 you started writing About your particular bonsai experience and species that you had worked on. And in 2001, those notes became the first comprehensive study of plant species suitable for bonsai available online. Tell us a little bit more about how that come about. Was it something, you know, what was you doing, just gathering notes?

Yeah, um, One of the most popular forums was the Australian forum called thebonsaisite.com. I don't know whether it exists anymore, but it had the highest volume of traffic coming through and was a very sort of dynamic forum. And it's where I visited there and I visited the IBC. The Bonsai Site very much pulled in beginners, people who literally tapped in bonsai Into a search engine and be brought to that forum. So there were very, very repetitive questions. You know, what's happening to my Chinese elm? What's I haven't watered my trees dying? What can I do? And the because I was answering a lot of these questions, it became easier to write down the answer to these stereotypical. Questions and answers and put them on the bonsai site itself, and we could refer people over to these stock answers. And then I had an old client who realized that this is what I was doing, and, you know, I was struggling with my back and coping with quite high pain levels and unable to work. And he said, right, Harry, I'm going to put you a website together and you can publish all this, this work that you're doing and it'll give you something to do with yourself, get you off the streets. And he gave me a choice of 2 domain names. One of them was really bad and the other that he gave me the option on was less bad, Bonsai for Me. And I was just like, shite, but okay, you know. And so that's where the Bonsai for Me name comes from. Someone just randomly picked it for me, and that's how Bonsai for Me started. And I think the first 3 months I just referred people from bonsai site and say, right, comments on the website, there's your answer.

Amazing.

And it built and built and built.

Amazing.

And I think the story goes here, I think there was 1,000 visitors in the first 3 months, uh, and then it exploded. Absolutely exploded to the point of getting, you know, millions of hits through the later 2000s.

Sure, that's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

And, um, while speaking about writing, you've published a number of books on the subject of bonsai via Bonsai for Me Publishing. Uh, Bonsai Inspirations 1 was published in 2011. Bonsai Inspirations 2 were published in 2012. Yeah, Bonsai Basics published in 2013, and you have a new book coming out very shortly. Um, what would that be called and what's it based on?

The new book coming out is basically an update of Bonsai Basics or Foundations of Bonsai. Um, I've run out of copies, it's been out of, um, print for a couple of years now, and I want to bring it back into print. But if I reprint a book, it always makes sense to just update the images, update the information if any needs to be changed, and just push the book as hard as I can.

Sure.

Just, just to improve it. Yeah. So that's what we're doing at the moment. Um, that reprint's going to go go ahead in the coming weeks. Then there's going to be a French translated version being published by Bonsai Free magazine in France. That's coming out in February. So along with the commissions and everything else that's going on, there's a lot of working on books.

There is a lot of working on books actually, and that brings me on to my next subject that as well as these books. You also write for a number of well-known bonsai magazines.

Yeah.

Um, and what drives you to keep writing, and is that something you intend to— do you intend to continue doing in the future?

Um, I think I get a lot of pleasure when I discover something. Um, you know, there'll be something that I can't quite Quite work out. I can't quite work out how to stop deadwood promoting, um, and I'll have this fight and it'll be an annoyance for years, or I'll suffer damage to a tree because I, um, I can't stop the wood breaking down. And then if I suddenly discover that using the cyanoacrylate or the crazy or super glue really works, really makes a difference, it gives me pleasure and it's like I get excited about it. And I get a thrill out of sharing it with people and unlocking doors for them.

Sure.

And it's something that I get, that sharing of information.

Sure.

And I think that's one of the really enjoyable things about bonsai is where we circulate information. Um, I do a hell of a lot of one-to-ones, you know, people come down into the garden, and I always feel that I learn something, an aspect of life that I, I don't know, because everyone, you know, there might be a beginner at bonsai, but everyone has their own skills, um, and skill sets, and you pick up little nuances, and that's an enjoyable thing in life. You're sharing information and just improving.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's one thing you're actually known for, is how generous you are with your bonsai knowledge, which is, which is, um, You know, it's a great, it's a great quality to have. I imagine you've seen the bonsai scene change a lot over the years, particularly within the UK. At this stage of your journey, mate, you've done so much, you know, from the classes, the workshops, the books. Do you still get excited by bonsai?

Oh good, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What inspires you?

God, if I mean if wasn't if it wasn't my job, I'd still be out here doing it anyway. And I still get a thrill out of get a thrill out of accomplishing each tree or the reactions they email me when start created something. I get that itch, and if I don't create something, don't get done. I just get a bit wayward. It's hard to explain, but I know I see it with other artistic people. Um, they just get a bit loony if they're not being creative.

Sure.

And I've spent literally, I mean, the past 20 years, 3 or 4 hours every single day outside just working on trees. Yeah, just for me, it's therapy. Yeah, I love it.

Earlier on Um, I got to have a little sneak peek at some of the material you've collected. Um, and mate, you've got dozens of trees here. Is that something that still drives you on? You must have one of the best collections of raw material. Um, do you intend on doing more collecting this year? How does it—

It's a buzz. It's, it's a buzz finding a tree kind of looking after it, nurturing it up in its own environment, and then the day you go out and you collect, it's fantastic. Again, it's just one of those things that I guess I live for, sad as that sounds, but it's a big buzz.

It's all part of it, isn't it?

I'm 50 now and I'm getting a bit old and creaky, but yeah, it's amazing.

It's amazing. Having done all of that, we've spoken about everything you've done, and we, you know, we've squashed it into a very small space. But, um, have you got a, like, what's a lesson you've learned along the way? Um, I hate that cliché question, if you could do one thing differently, what would you do? But is there anything you could say, oh mate, like when collecting a tree or when working on a bonsai?

Oh, I think one of the biggest things, um, It's the entire learning process. I think I've got a certain skill set because I had to use very raw material, poor quality material. It meant that I had to really push myself to extract anything out of it. But I wouldn't describe myself as unique. But I'm learning. Lucky to have come through that route and had the time to come through that route. The much, much better way of doing things is to go to workshops, do one-to-ones with people, um, keep watching videos from different artists, get little flavors from all the different artists because they all do things slightly differently, they all have different opinions, and you want to kind of pick from here, pick from from here and come to your own, your own way of doing things, and that's going to put you in really, really good stead.

Mm-hmm.

Don't be dismissive of buying finished trees if you have the money. Keeping finished trees is an entirely different skill set. It's a lot harder than people realize. I mean, I read this cliché from people so often when they say a bonsai is never finished. I don't think they actually understand what that means. And keeping a tree at peak condition is incredibly hard work, and that's something that you, you can learn and get the enjoyment from, is actually having some finished trees. Starts from saplings, starts from, um, some really good projects that have longevity. I've got trees that I very much enjoy that. I remember when they were just saplings, and I bought them on over years. But you can't just do that because 15 years, 20 years development time is a lot longer than you realize. And I've seen people do it. You know, they have these fantastic dreams, but those dreams will get crushed out of monotony after five, ten years, and you don't want to do that. So. Be be open to ideas. Try lots of different things, and make sure you engage with people.

Yeah, awesome. That's awesome, Harry. Um, you know, we're sat out here in the workshop. It's a special place. It really is.

And unfortunately, we've got a nice heater.

Well, exactly, actually, because unfortunately summertime is over, and we are. Well, on our way into autumn. I like to call it fall.

It's your American heritage.

Because I like to imagine I'm American. Um, what is the next step for this time of year, Harry? What have you got planned? Uh, what's the—

yeah, well, my, my workflow at the moment is I'm still going through pines. All the pines have been needle pruned. I've got A few people working with me now. There's Sean, Sean the Apprentice, he's been around for years, does a hell of a lot of work. Paul comes down, and there's now a new apprentice, Syed Abbas, who some people know as Owls and Bonsai on Instagram. He's been coming down and apprenticing with me, and with the help of these people I'm able to get through all the pines, all the plucking done, um, and wiring commissions, the trees that need a little wire. And I'm kind of building up to the point where all my deciduous trees drop the leaves, and then I've got 2 months all the way up until Christmas of detailing all my personal collection. So a hell of a lot of work, but it's worth it. And then for me, that's when the collection really, really shines.

Yeah, amazing. Um, finally, I'm gonna put all your details in the description anyway, but is there— if anyone needs to contact you, what's the best way of going about contacting you?

Um, probably by email, and I will get back to you. It's just, it may take a little while.

Mate, Harry, you're a legend as always, brother. I always enjoy spending time with you, mate. Thanks for having us. Until next time, Nobari TV, over and out.

Cheers.