Bob writes:
This cracking oak tree was collected in the Italian alps.
I bought it from Steve Tolley on one of our trips to his great yamadori bonsai nursery, it had been in its container for about two and a half years and on Steve's advice I left it for another season before repotting, only carrying out the carving work.

In late spring it gave out a flush of bright green leaves so I knew it was ok and decided to repot it in Oct 2008.

Now, finding a suitable pot for the tree presented a bit of a problem. It was quite old and gnarled, but had a strange kind of twist in the nebari as it rose from it's pot so I thought, ok, I will construct my own container for it.

A short while before, I had been working on a landscape project, a new beer garden at my local pub. After demolishing some old stone walls I came across this clinker type stone in the footings.
I took as much as I could, sadly not enough. I wish I had a mountain of the stuff it's much lighter than natural rock. When cemented together it looks great. Some seem to think that it may have come from the coke ovens of a long gone steel plant in Cardiff, anyway, this was to be the material for the pot. The image I had in mind was that the tree would be growing out from an outcrop of rocks in the wild and in this way I could disguise the problem with the lower trunk.

I am quite pleased with the final result. There is still a little bit more to do but to think I found this material in the ground of my old local pub here in Penarth and a tree from the alps. Well that's just magic, I hope you agree?
Bob Hill
Dragon Bonsai