Starting Year: 2008;
Provenance: England;
Container: Stone Monkey Ceramic Pot;
Source: Yamadori;

Style: Seki-joju;
Height: 28,5cm;

The tree is 21.5cm from the lip of the pot to the top of the canopy and the pot itself is 17cm in diameter and 7cm tall.

This Cotoneaster horizontalis is a root-over-rock composition that brings together two deeply significant elements: a young seedling rescued in 2008 from the stone wall of an elderly friend, and a piece of ancient Precambrian gneiss once carried home from Antarctica. Their union tells a story shaped by memory, friendship, and time.

The tree began life as a tiny plant growing from the cracks of a garden wall. Its collector, a gentle and thoughtful mentor, has since passed away, and the tree now carries his memory in its living form. The rock beneath it—an ancient metamorphic stone from Antarctica—was given by another friend, a glaciologist, who could not take the sample back to Chile. Together, tree and stone form a composition that is less a replication of nature than an imaginative landscape, a miniature world. The artist’s daughters named it Laputa, inspired by Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki’s 1986 animated fantasy—an apt reference for a tree that evokes both wonder and a sense of floating, suspended history.

The species, naturalised in the UK but native to the mountains of Nepal, China, and Taiwan, offers many qualities suited to bonsai: tiny glossy leaves emerging early in spring, delicate pink flowers beloved by bees, and bright, miniature, apple-like fruits that often last into winter. Its fine, rugged branching adds texture and age to the overall image. Yet it is also a challenging species—slow to heal wounds, prone to dieback, and brittle beyond its first year of growth—requiring thoughtful, patient work to maintain its character.

After many years of training, the tree now presents two distinct but harmonious viewing fronts, each highlighting different aspects of its structure and story. It sits in a pot made in 2022 by Stone Monkey (Andy Pearson), whose passing in 2024 adds yet another layer of meaning to the composition.

Today, this Cotoneaster stands not only as a bonsai, but as a quiet tribute to the people, places, and moments that shaped it—an imaginative landscape anchored in memory, time, and friendship.