What happened to 2025, and what’s planned for 2026

Hi Blue Skyers,

Firstly and most importantly, thank you so much for all the kind messages and good wishes.  It really means a lot, and keeps me super motivated to share these updates with you. And, I’m happy to say I’m doing okay. I’ve had a couple of minor medical scares along the way, but thankfully nothing too serious.

The Book

Life, as ever, has been busy with family commitments, the book, and, well… life. On the book front, I’ve been working away on translating it into Spanish. As it turns out, it’s taking just about as long to translate as it did to write in the first place! I decided to do it myself because I am really keen to say it all in the Blue Sky way; just not in English this time.

The Club

I’ve also been getting to the bonsai club in Madrid somewhat less than I’d hoped, but I’m planning to be there more regularly this year. It’s always fun and really helps to get a second pair of eyes (and sometimes hands) on my trees.

The Trees

The good news is, plenty of work has been happening on and off the benches. All the trees are growing healthily and vigorously, and I’m pleased to report zero tree deaths in 2025, which (and I might be wrong here) I think is the first year I can say that. This is how the benches looked in October:

The Satsuki

In March I chose a new pot for my tall Satsuki azalea “Aiko” and repotted it. And, only for the repotting year, I removed all the flowers as they started to emerge in May, to redirect all the growing energy to the leaves, shoots and roots. It leafed out brilliantly, and I also took some cuttings which rooted successfully. Later this year I’ll post an update with some flowering pics in May or June.

The Promise

Back in November 2022 I made a promise to myself: I wouldn’t acquire any more bonsai until I had cleared space for them, either by giving or selling some trees, or maybe by accidentally killing some. Perhaps like a “three out, one in” type of scheme.

Sure enough, last year I gave away some of my developing cuttings as “starter” bonsai in some small old bonsai pots. To celebrate the victory I bought myself a small bougainvillea; I decided it was time for another flowering bonsai.

The Bougie

After a few weeks I gently lifted it out of its pot and saw the overgrown roots; bougainvilleas root quite vigorously, so rather than waiting until Spring I decided to slip pot it into a more fitting bowl.

It is still quite immature, and has a thin trunk with some interesting movement, so, give it a few years of trunk-thickening, and I think it will look pretty special.

The Junies

Apart from all the usual repotting in Spring and year-round pruning, I’ve also been spending time working on two Chinese junipers… firstly this Kishu:

…and this Itoigawa:

I bought these junipers several years ago and for the most part, I left them on the bench to grow and strengthen up. Until last year. I made some progress on the Kishu, including slip potting and cleaning up, initial removal of unwanted branches leaving stubs, jinning and applying lime sulphur, and initial branch wiring.

To protect and whiten the jinned branches and shari, I used the lime sulphur that Adam McCallion of Notion Bonsai kindly sent me – thank you Adam! Adam sells a whole load of bonsai care products on the Notion Bonsai website here.

By contrast, I made very little progress with the Itoigawa, hampered by indecision! I basically just cleaned up the unwanted and badly-positioned weak shoots. The looping trunk is fanciful and fun, but I’m having a challenge deciding what to do with that handle-bar branch division. In any case, there’s no rush.

I’ve filmed quite a bit of the work, including on the Kishu. Whether it all makes it to the editing table any time soon is another matter, but that’s certainly the plan.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to this year, as always I’ve got a long list of trees to repot. With a bit of luck, I’ll also find the time to move some of my larger pre-bonsai trees, grown from seed and cuttings, into shallow training pots.

I’ll be continuing work on the junipers, possibly with some drastic changes. And I’ll also be giving a couple of workshops at the club, which will be fun.

If you’d like to see more of my trees and bonsai work in high resolution, feel free to take a look at my tree albums on Flickr.com. It’s like a running record of progress on each bonsai.

Plenty more to come, and I’ll share updates as things progress. Thanks again for your support, and stay tuned!

Best wishes,
Dave