End of an Era. And todays Bonsai By The harbour

[Grant Bowie]

I just learnt today that Noel SUMMERELL has been moved into an aged care facility yesterday. He is barely able to stand and not able to work on any of his trees.

In the early years of Bonsai in Sydney (the 70s and 80s)There were a number of people interested in Australian plants as Bonsai.
The first person I met was Leonard Webber. He had many Port Jackson Figs in his yard, on benches at the back of his house mostly in heavy shade. He apparently hardly if ever fertilised these trees and they stayed much the same year after year and never improved. THe Koreshoffs also had some native’s although I don’t specifically remember any individual figs. Ric ROBERTS had many figs and collected some quite large figs on the north side of the harbour.

Meanwhile Max Candy and Noel SUMMERELL were collaborating and making leaps and jumps in unlocking the secrets of Figs. Max was his usual creative self and trying to grow figs with fat trunks with lots of experiments on trunk fattening techniques, root growing techniques and severe cut-downs. Noel concentrated on growing as many different kinds of figs he could find. I believe at one stage he was growing about 80 different types of figs. He and max grew figs from seeds and cuttings. Noel noticed and named the Little Ruby Fig which he propagated and popularised.
Most of the seed they grew came from a park in Burwood.
Another person back then was Tom Coogan. He also helped look into fertilising and growing of figs ( including frequent defoliation and twisting off of the terminal leaf but leaving the leaf or bud underneath. This way you slowed the elongation down and left a smaller leaf to unfurl and harden prematurely. The subsequent leaves were also smaller until of course the vigour kicked back in.
Max also looked at the difference between seed and cutting grown figs. The seed grown PJ Figs grew a bulbous trunk quickly whereas the cutting grown ones did not. Long term he found no difference in the outcome.
Max died in 2007. Noel is now in care and Tom is living in the NSW coast somewhere near Nowra I believe.
Today at BBTH it was great to see the next generation of Bonsai people showing their skills. A great day.

Grant

[Watto]

I am sad to hear of Noel not being able to work on bonsai anymore. He is one of the great characters in Australian bonsai.

[kcpoole]

Nice to Catch up wit lots of Bonsai peeps yesterday and sad to hear of Noel not being able to work and care for his trees.
Nice to see lots of youngsters getting the Bonsai bug too

Ken