Starter trees
Honest first trees for new keepers — hardy species suited to the North Coast, potted properly, priced fairly, and handed over with enough knowledge to keep them thriving past the first summer.
A bonsai yard on the KZN North Coast
Some trees are not grown for speed. They are shaped by patience.
Old Tree Yard is a Japanese-inspired bonsai nursery and restoration yard taking root on a small farm outside Ballito — where old trees are bought, sold, brought back to life, and given somewhere worthy to stand.
Ballito · KwaZulu-Natal — 29.5391° S, 31.2141° E
Walk the path
始
A nursery the size of a promise.
Old Tree Yard starts the way most good yards do: a spare corner of working farmland, a collection of about twenty trees in training, and two friends who decided to stop talking about it. There are no investors and no warehouse — there is a bench Wesley built, a workshop Tyron keeps too tidy, and evenings that smell of pine sap and sawdust.
We are starting small on purpose. Bonsai punishes haste and rewards attention, and we intend to earn this yard one season at a time — growing stock, restoring neglected trees, and learning out loud as we go.
Field note · 001Recorded at the yard
- Trees in trainingTwenty, and counting
- GroundOne quiet corner of a farm
- HandsThree pairs. Often dirty.
- CapitalMostly patience
- VisitsBy appointment, for now
木
Trees with history, looking for their next keeper.
Every tree that leaves the yard goes with its story, its age, and a care sheet written for KZN coastal conditions — not a generic label printed for another climate.
Raw material & pre-bonsai
Field-grown trunks and developing stock for growers who want the long road — trees with good bones, movement, and taper, ready for the next ten years of your attention.
Specimen & collector trees
Older, styled trees — sourced carefully, quarantined, documented, and matched to keepers who understand what they are taking custody of. These are not bought in a hurry, by us or by you.
再
Bring us the tree you think you've lost.
The inherited juniper nobody watered. The mall-bought ficus dropping its last leaves. The fig your father wired thirty years ago. Before it goes in the bin, let it spend a few seasons on our recovery benches.
Assess
Roots, soil, pests, deadwood, history. We work out what the tree has survived before deciding what it can take next.
Step 01Stabilise
Emergency repotting, correct light, careful water. No styling, no wire — just the quiet work of keeping it alive.
Step 02Rebuild
Once vigour returns, we regrow structure over seasons: new shoots guided, scars managed, the old design respected.
Step 03Return
The tree goes home with a written care plan — or, if you'd rather, we find it a keeper who has room for its next chapter.
Step 04No judgement here. Most dying bonsai were loved by someone who was simply never shown how — that's exactly what this yard exists to fix.
台
A good tree deserves a good stand.
Every display stand that leaves Old Tree Yard is built by Tyron in the farm workshop — local hardwoods, joinery cut by hand, edges eased with a plane rather than a router, finished in oil and wax so it can be renewed for decades.
A stand is the frame around a living painting. It should hold the tree up without ever speaking over it — and it should still be doing that job long after both of us are gone.
Commission a stand →Workshop sheet · 014One at a time
- TimbersKiaat · Ash · Blackwood
- JoineryHand-cut, no visible fixings
- FinishOil & wax, renewable for decades
- Lead timeUnhurried. We'll tell you honestly.
録
Filmed as it happens. Mistakes included.
Old Tree Yard is also a YouTube journey: Wesley in front of the camera with the trees, Tyron behind it with the edit. From bare ground to first sale, every repot, rescue and wrong turn — recorded so the next person can start better than we did.
Episode 01 · Coming soon
The First Twenty
Wesley's collection leaves the back garden and takes up residence on the farm. The yard officially has trees.
Episode 02 · Coming soon
Raising the Sign
Tyron builds the Old Tree Yard entrance sign from workshop offcuts — and learns what the wind thinks of it.
Episode 03 · Coming soon
The One We Almost Lost
Our first rehabilitation case arrives in a black bag. Wesley gives it the talk; the benches do the rest.
続
We are not in a hurry.
The plan is simple and slow: grow good trees, restore forgotten ones, teach what we learn, and keep filming. If we do that well enough for long enough, Old Tree Yard becomes the place people in KwaZulu-Natal mean when they say the bonsai yard.
"If we do this right, the best trees in this yard will outlive everyone who works in it." — The long view, written on the workshop wall
The road · in three lines百年
- NowTwenty trees, a workshop, a camera, weekends
- NextOpen-yard days · beginner workshops · the Atlas grows
- SomedayKZN's home for bonsai — taught, restored & sold from one yard