AusBonsai

I am a great admirer of English Elm as bonsai and sometimes get a little "ticked off" when people speak disrespectfully of them. There have been some fantastic English Elms on display at the National Collection in Canberra and our Victorian cousins probably have some of the best anywhere in the world.
We do have the possibility of digging a few in and around Goulburn and with time I think there will be some great examples coming from here, I hope so any way.
So here are a few few of mine, all dug locally.

Hi Watto I to like the english elm as a bonsai , only have one little shohin , must say I am getting a little frustrated with mine but That is 100 % due to my inexperience with them so I'm trying to do abit of research on training them . Might PM you to pick your brain sometime if that's ok with you . Those ones of yours look good I especially like the first one
peterb

No need to PM, keep it out in the open for the benefit of others. I've got a few of these too and am interested in how others train them!

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Great elms watto. Im keen to hear how you develop E.E.

Elms? What elms? All I saw were PK pots.

It's true, I don't mind a PK pot!

Beautiful collection Watto. How long to get them to this stage ? Cheers John.

The shohin was dug about 20 years ago and all the others about 4 or 5 years ago. I think like all yamadori they take a couple of years to get use to pot life before you can really start to develop them.

A lovely collection there Watto! As you know i also love E.E's and cannot understand why people dont like them I have just received one back from Joel as he could no longer look after it. It was the 2010 encouragement award to him. He sent it to me and the courier failed to deliver it and i estimate it was missing for ten days. After a frustrating round of bad communications it finally arrived and is, hopefully, still alive. I will do a post on it if it survives but it reinforces how tough they are.

Watto wrote:It's true, I don't mind a PK pot!

Sorry Watto That was rude of me. I meant to comment on the trees as well, but my son distracted me at home and pushed submit thinking I had commented.

I really love the 2nd one, it looks the most natural to me and looks like a real tree. The first is very beautiful as a 'bonsai', but I only see a bonsai in that photo and not a tree, similar with the 4th.

The 3rd one is hard to make out the bones obviously, but a nice colour combination with the pot though.

Please don't take offence to my comments, they are just my opinion/thoughts.

Certainly no offence taken Rory. All four bonsai are very different and I think that is what you get from digs, things you wouldn't normally think of doing.

Bodhi, I'm sorry about the lost in transit elm, but in times like that (trauma) they do drop/loose a few branches but as long as the base is still alive they will throw new shoots under care. Good luck with it.

Great thread Watto.
Make sure you update in winter please!

I too would be interested in any care / maintenance routines.

Could not agree more Greg . Tough as , leaves reduce nicely and great bark . The temptation is to have too many especially when you have clump in your backyard ! Cheers . Graham

Graham,
Thanks for the photos. Time will bring out their great glory and I think that is why the ones form Victoria now are the best going around, they dug quite a few years ago and the development has been good since.