Feeling like punched on the gut...

My daughter goes to a catholic school in the same complex of a very old catholic church. Since I started bonsai, I always admired and coveted the hedges around it but never had the courage to ask. At noon today (a few minutes ago) I went to setup the tuition payment plan and found that all of the plants are gone ...yes GONE!!! The whole area was plain dirt and I learned that they will be replaced with fence shortly.

There used to be a row of approx 8" (just the visible trunk) TX Sage that are 8 feet high on one side (maybe 10 trees) and mix of various plants on the other side. Some are definite bonsai candidates...

Just got back and I am still feeling sick ...can't even eat now.

Oh I feel for you!! This happens all the time to me too. Just last winter I was looking at old Pyracantha bushes, probably 10-12 of them, that had been hedged for 30+ years in the shopping center next to where I work. I had even stopped to take pictures of the bases with the plans to ask the property owners in Spring to collect these old overgrown beauties. The hedge was about 3' tall and they all had large knobby trunks of 5-8" across, mostly single stems with twisty branches. Then in January they were all gone one day, and have since been replaced with yucca plants. Yuck!

I feel your pain...

https://ibonsaiclub.forumotion.com/t4757-boxwood-massacre-2010

Poink88 wrote:feeling sick ...can't even eat now.

blimey !! dont worry about it that much or you will waste away - you can have lots of poor to average stuff sat everywhere, or a smaller collection that are good,............ or a fantastic selection with just one or two of each species that takes the same amount of time, love and care as the big pile of average stuff used to.

More important I think, before long you realise the timing of bonsai jobs is critical for each species - pruning, wiring, thinning, defoliating etc all can have a very narrow time band to work properly......when you look out at a yard overflowing with trees that need the same work doing at the same time the joy goes out of the boring jobs, and many of the trees suffer as you work your favorites and let the others slip back...it's part of the bonsai wheel tho - spoke number two

cheers Marcus