Mirai tree sale

[BobbyLane]

Good point, and I think Ryan would totally agree with this.

I will also add that if we are talking about great American collectors, Todd Schlafer is right up there with the best of them. Todd has collected some mind-boggling trees. A lot of them. Ryan has featured Todd Schlafer collected trees on many Mirai streams as well.

ive seen many of his spruces on FB.

 

[rockm]

Good point, and I think Ryan would totally agree with this.

I will also add that if we are talking about great American collectors, Todd Schlafer is right up there with the best of them. Todd has collected some mind-boggling trees. A lot of them. Ryan has featured Todd Schlafer collected trees on many Mirai streams as well.

There's a pretty good list on Ryan's page of the collectors behind the trees he has. It is only a partial list of the significant professional and hobby collectors in the U.S. Click on "collectors"

Tree Gallery

bonsaimirai.com

 

[clem]

No. don't have to have mountains to get decent yamadori, but for the stuff being sold for high end, it helps. The Rocky Mountains are only one of those areas in the mainland U.S. There are others, from South Dakota, to New Mexico, to Southern California, as well as the Niagara Escarpment and the Appalachians in the east. Florida, Louisiana, the Gulf Coast present other collection opportunities for other species.

in Europe there are a lot of country with great potential too (Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania.. with mountains etc) ->

For example in France nice scot pines are found @ aprox. 1000 meters high. Higher you can find european spruce, larix, mugo pines, etc etc

The most important thing, IMO, is that you have in your garden Bonsai that "make your day"

 

[clem]

Good point, and I think Ryan would totally agree with this.

I will also add that if we are talking about great American collectors, Todd Schlafer is right up there with the best of them. Todd has collected some mind-boggling trees. A lot of them. Ryan has featured Todd Schlafer collected trees on many Mirai streams as well.

I have a book of Larry Jackel "ponderosa pines as Bonsai"

 

[rockm]

in Europe there are a lot of country with great potential too (Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania.. with mountains etc) ->
View attachment 393887
For example in France nice scot pines are found @ aprox. 1000 meters high. Higher you can find european spruce, larix, mugo pines, etc etc

The most important thing, IMO, is that you have in your garden Bonsai that "make your day"

The wild areas in the U.S. and the rest of North America (hello Canada and Mexico) are still far greater in total than in Europe. Many Europeans simply don't get the scale of the U.S. or North America. Don't know if you've ever been to the Western U.S., but it's pretty thinly settled and the spaces between people are vast. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the custodian of public lands that don't include national parks, are primary sources for bonsai collectors. It's where Randy Knight and other collectors pull many spectacular trees from. BLM is responsible for managing 247 million acres (1 million square kilometers) of territory, most of it centered in the 12 Western states. That's almost double the size of France in collectible territory, not just territory.

Additionally, the climate zones in the U.S. are very funky. We run the entire range of climates on the continental U.S., from temperate rain forests in the Pacific NW, to alpine regions along the continental divide, to high desert in South Dakota to great plains in Texas, and lowland and mountainous hardwood forests in Appalachia, to tropical swamps along the Gulf Coast. Alaska and Hawaii add more diversity. And yes, there are many microclimate zones within each zone. For instance, specific areas in the SW deserts have ALL OF THOSE ZONES IN A SINGLE MOUNTAIN. "Sky Island"mountains that range above 10,000 feet in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico have alpine, temperate, subtropical and desert climates all in one place. That kind of climate diversity leads to a lot of diversity in plants, which is reflected in the number of North American tree species.

Look I could do this all day. For the most part, Japan, with its limited geography, was played out of good yamadori material a hundred years ago. There isn't much left there. Europe has been thickly settled for centuries. There is very little wild land left there. Yeah, there is some, but it's not Montana.

And yes, it is important to have bonsai in your garden that make your day. That's what's going on with the sale, I think. Most of those trees would make anyone's day.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Flash sales, countdown sales, black friday sales are a common sales tactic,
they obviously have a superb marketing/sales team. but photography also raises value and quality, someone mentioned other artists having similar styles to Ryan, but im betting their photography on their sales sites is not even half as good as the mirai sale photos. im betting that even their write ups on each tree isnt half as good as the mirai tree bios either. these are all unique selling points and mirai seems to have nailed every aspect of it. we see the value of great photography when Mach5 posts his intricately detailed pieces, it just brings everything up a few notches.
its another reason why he is able to attract the high status clientele he's attracting. i just read that article above. sounds like mirai have some heavy hitters taking notice and loving the trees so much that theyre willing to spend big.
that is exemplary marketing skills, all these extra overheads must come at great cost too. unless Ryan is doing everything himself, i think not.

Tuning up a tree for being camera-friendly makes a lot of difference, too. We all have trees that look fine to the eye, but are not photogenic. Some features that look great in-person look like shit in 2 dimensions.

 

[atlarsenal]

There's a pretty good list on Ryan's page of the collectors behind the trees he has. It is only a partial list of the significant professional and hobby collectors in the U.S. Click on "collectors"

Tree Gallery

bonsaimirai.com

I will add most of these trees are available for purchase also.

 

[BobbyLane]

but why isnt there more conifers in that gallery, there should be more conifers