A DAY WITH PETER CHAN AT HERONS BONSAI
Herons Bonsai is most likely one of the most famous bonsai nursery in the world at the moment.
Thanks to its charismatic owner, Peter Chan, this beautiful place situated an hour south of London, gained an enormous web fame becoming with no doubt the Mecca of english bonsai.
Mr Chan, reinvented himself not just from engineer to bonsai grower but also becoming a really active Youtuber. Thanks to his kind persona and his hundreds of videos Peter, took over this social network, teaching to thousands of people the amazing art of bonsai growing.
His key has always been to make simple and easy to understand this techniques that for centuries have been consider difficult to learn. In this way he transformed bonsai from a status for few, to an hobby for everybody, connecting more and more people to the nature that they are surrounded by.
We have been lucky enough to be invited to the nursery for a bonsai workshop after winning an online competition back in march 2022, and finally on the 23rd of August we had the possibility to fly to London to meet the master.
Arriving at the nursery the first thing that we realized is how beautiful is the area where it is positioned. Just an hour away from the biggest European city, this area was completely immersed in nature, far away from London’s loud streets.
The garden is surrounded by a wooden fence and once you’ll get in a pathway, opens up to show a collection of beautiful outdoor bonsai meticulously curated by Mr. Chan and his qualified team. Two big green houses are the home of the indoor trees and a pottery shop, and in the backyard after a beautiful zen garden with a little Koy lake and a patio, you’ll find a big bunch of trees still in development.
“After watching all his videos this place looked surprisingly familiar.”
After a little tour, we began the class. The workshop was a beginner guide on the styling of Picea Albertiana that we proceeded to wire for the first time. Thanks to its pedagogic ways Mr. Chan gave the chance to everybody in the class to create their own bonsai from scratch.
During the all duration of the course we had the chance to work on two trees each, where the second one was chosen directly by us, from the big variety of nursery stock available. We chose a a young grouping of Scot Pines and a Ginkgo Biloba that we respectively turned into a windswept group and an informal upright prebonsai.
After some cake and coffee we had the chance to chat a little with Mr. Chan. We exchanged some gifts and we talked about our common passion for this amazing art form.
