Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Bonsai in California-2009-#2-Roy Nagatoshi

Roy has this most impressive nursery in LA. He has a few hundred junipers there, mostly Californian juniper with Itoigawa grafted on. Roy is the world record holder in approach grafting Itoigawa onto anything. In two images one can see the little pots that hang right in the tree. His success rate is enormous. and the quality of the trees speaks for itself. Roy has these monster pomegranates, Punica granatum, which deeply impressed me. They are huge an have the most impressive deadwood and hollows. Who said that deadwood on deciduous trees is forbidden? Roy is obviously an outsating gardener and artist.
When I asked him about the Ichiban tool he took it out of his pocket and said something along these lines:
"In the very beginning it took me about a week to really get used to this. it is so different then what we had before. Now it actually IS the tool number one. I always use it and always have it with me. On some days I only use this tool. I work a lot with this, believe me, and it is still amazingly sharp after three weeks. Normal tools I have to sharpen ever other day."


2 comments:

Jeff said...

What is the name of Roy's nursery?

Walter Pall said...

A simple google search would have shown this:

http://www.users.uswest.net/~rjbphx/Nagatoshi.html