Considering how much I love bonsai, I have not been very diligent with their maintenance so far this year.
Along with everything else on my workload, I might add!
Just like our garden, which grows wilder by the minute, all of my tiny trees are doing their level best to become wild too. Masses of new leaves are appearing daily, rendering most of them almost unrecognisable. I do try to keep up with the pruning, but it’s a case of too little, too late and now they seem out of control.
With one exception.
When we first moved to Hampshire, I didn’t have any bonsai and was desperate to start another collection. One of the first trees to attract my attention was a Laburnam. Its long plumes of bright yellow flowers have long been one of my favourites. I wondered if it would make a good bonsai. I had to wait until the flowers set seed, but it was worth the wait. It is a long process, but eventually, I had a seedling and then a sapling. When it finally flowered, I was over the moon.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who loved this tree. All the snails in Hampshire loved it too, and every year, the minute the leaves appeared in Spring, overnight, it would be stripped bare.
I won’t use slug pellets because of the hedgehogs, and the copper tape didn’t work at all.
Since that first flower, it hasn’t delighted me since. In retrospect, looking at it today, all that munching has helped to create a wonderful shape. The leaves are growing back now, so if the munchkins can leave it alone, we might get flowers next year…
Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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