This Common Privet/Ligustrum ovalifolium was part of a large hedge growing in Faisal Waheedy’s London garden that was collected during April 2010. Photographed is Francis Consunji-Chan digging the tree out of the thick London-clay it had been growing in for the previous 80+years.
The collected Privet was wrapped in plastic bin-liner to keep the roots moist, taken home and bare-rooted before being potted up.
By the following day the tree had been potted up and pruned ready for new buds and shoots to appear as the tree recovered from collection. I had heavily pruned the tree, removing the multiple-trunks that emerged from the trunkbase leaving a nicely tapered stump. The heavy roots that had been collected were also removed; Privet are exceptionally tough and will happily produce new roots from the trunkbase. The removal of any thick or long roots that would make planting the tree in a bonsai pot difficult in the future are better removed immediately after collection.
By the Summer of 2011 the Privet had developed many new branches and was extremely vigorous. As is normal with broad-leaf bonsai, once the primary branches had been established and allowed to thicken during 2010, the tree had been pruned back hard, wired and the image above shows the resulting flush of new secondary branches.
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After the first frosts of Winter had caused the leaves to begin to drop in December 2011, I decided to defoliate the Privet so it could be pruned, wired and carved.
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One of the main reasons for carving the tree was to remove the large wounds left over from the removal of the multiple trunks 18 months earlier.
Using a die-grinder and a Dremel I hollowed out the wounds and continued carving into the trunk itself to create a feature of what had previously been a very ugly area of the trunk.
Detail of the carving at the back of the Privet bonsai; this image shows the back of the tree from the same angle as in the second image in this photo-series.
Rather than have one side (the back) of the bonsai heavily-carved and leave the front untouched, I continued carving through the entire trunk and opened out the front into a shari.
The trunk now entirely hollowed out.
Finally, the newly carved areas were painted with a thick coat of Instant Coffee to soften the harsh tones of the freshly carved wood.
And finally; the newly carved and styled Privet bonsai, ready for a bonsai pot next Spring. Height 13″/32cm, trunk diameter 5″/12.5cm
UPDATE: This is the same Privet bonsai photographed in 2019, now planted in a pot by Victor Harris of Erin Pottery.
There’s quite a story to be told about the years between 2011 and 2019, and now in 2023. And one that I will write about soon!
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