Steve Jones, Spring Market
'People love what they look like...they think they are hundreds of years old even when they are only ten years old'
Date Published: 22/10/2009 Updated: 18/06/2010
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Steve Jones, of Dinky Art Bonsai, sells bonsai trees at the Christmas Markets, Spring Market and Piccadilly Flower Market. Steve talks about his love of the job: “I’ve been selling trees for 20 years, and I've been doing bonsai for 30 years. I was bought a bonsai kit for Christmas, and it’s just gone from there. People started buying them from me as I was growing them, and then I tried to sell a few. I got made redundant, and I just thought, I’ll do what I know. I started doing a few smaller markets, and got on to the specialist markets. Things are ticking over nicely. “It’s like anything. It’s like an apprenticeship. You learn about different trees, different plants, different soils….different ways of training them and different ways of shaping them. Everything we do, from when we get them from China and Japan, is done to make sure they are in the top condition. “We have a lot of regular customers who are bonsai specialists, who come to see me every week. We’ve got a good reputation in Manchester, and we are probably the only people in the North West who specialise in bonsai. “Bonsai is an art form. There are about 20,000 different varieties of tree. In Chinese it means tree in a pot, and in Japanese tree in shallow tray. I think people like them because of the mystique. “What bought bonsai into my life was a film called The Karate Kid. If I had a pound for every time someone said ‘Mr Miagi’, or ‘Wax on wax off,’ I’d be a lot more well off than I am now! But it did bring it to the forefront. “People think bonsai brings peace, they think it brings calm. It’s a very relaxing hobby because it's not a quick fix. It takes many, many years to get a bonsai tree to how you want it to look. It can take 20 years.” Dinky Art Bonsai |
