The Hill: Collecting Hawthorn yamadori for bonsai Part One

Some of you will be aware that I spend the autumn and winter months climbing the hills searching for Yamadori, old trees that are suitable for collecting and recovery for bonsai. This video was shot in late January when the days are at the shortest and on a particularly dull and overcast day. The camera footage is mainly shot on the GoPro. And as daylight had left me around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the majority of the footage was taken in very low light and the culmination of the dig in complete darkness. I have, however, decided to publish the footage as some will still be interested in seeing the lengths that we need to go to collect high-quality Yamadori, particularly during the winter months. Collecting trees for bonsai is hard. It's cold, sometimes very bleak, dirty work, and is physically demanding. Carrying a tree back to your vehicle across the hills is something that takes a lot of motivation. However, the thrill of arriving home with a beautiful old tree that I may have initially discovered 2, 3 years previously is a huge driving force and motivation. I will endeavor to make much better quality video as the days become longer and light levels improve. And publish them on this channel. I've been very lucky to discover an area with very old hawthorn, dogwood, and blackthorn that are being systematically ripped up and burnt by the owner, and as a result, I have permission to dig. I also know that by removing the trees, I'm giving them an opportunity to be seen and appreciated by enthusiasts across the world, rather than the trees being simply burnt. My walk up the hill is probably the hardest part of any dig. According to my iPhone, it's the equivalent of climbing 30 flights of stairs, and then there's another 10, 15 while I'm wandering around up there. It's a lot of climbing. Fortunately though, it means the majority of my return back to the car is then downhill while I've actually got a tree on my shoulder. The trees on the hill live in a very shallow layer of soil on top of a solid layer of chalk bedrock. This means that their root balls are naturally very shallow and relatively easy to collect, but it also limits their height and their vigour. Rabbits and deer are abundant up in the area, and they are continually chewing on the lower growth and the bark of the trees, creating natural shari and live veins. I've been collecting on this particular hill for 5 years now and have seen the majority of the trees rarely grow each year. Each spring they issue rosettes of flowering leaves, flowers, and berries, but they rarely actually grow. It's a very tough life for them up there. I have many trees on the hill that I have prepped by chopping or pruning them in previous years. Today I'm going to collect a hawthorn that I know will have a very good root ball as the soil stays relatively damp all year round in that particular spot, and I've collected a number of other trees from the same area. As it happens, the tree looks fairly small when seen in the ground, but it has a 6 to 7 inch trunk base and is very substantial in terms of bonsai. My collecting tools consist of a small pickaxe or a mattock, a pair of secateurs for pruning smaller branches and roots, 2 folding pruning saws for sawing through large branches and thick roots. They're superb for digging into the ground to cut through thick roots that you find. I sharpen these before every dig to ensure a faster and a more easy cut. The teeth quickly become blunted in the stony soil, hence taking 2 of them. I also take a steel and a nylon hand rake for moving the soil around. Finally, a hand chainsaw blade for cutting very thick branches and trunks. They also are excellent at cutting thick, inaccessible taproots when they occur under the root ball, and you can loop the chainsaw blade under the root ball and sever it. My spade is a Root Slayer. It has a sharpened blade and has been modified with a thick steel shaft. The tree is pruned back. I remove branches that I know I will not need for the tree as a bonsai. However, I will try to leave one thick trunk or branch to help lever the tree out of the ground. That will then be cut once the tree is free. Once the tree has been pruned and the debris removed, I can start digging the root ball. I dig a trench around the tree, cutting through any thick roots that I encounter. Now, by this time, the light in this video had faded too far for the camera to pick up much more of the collection. After around an hour of cutting through the thick surface roots, pulling away the soil to discover all the roots that were anchoring the tree into the ground, it came free. I always wrap the root ball in a large black bin bag and then put some sphagnum moss in there to ensure there's some moisture around the roots. It's then time to carry the tree back to the car. Weighing approximately 35 to 40 kilos, it takes a lot of effort, which is made worse by being in the pitch dark with just the head torch. But these days I know the hill like the back of my hand. Back home in my garden and some decent light and video footage, we can finally see the extent of the hawthorn itself. In my next video, I will show you the potting up of this tree, which soils and containers are best to use for Yamadori, and some aftercare tips, and with much better quality video. Thank you for watching.