Nursery shopping

My brother-in-law Steve and myself went to a nursery to pick through hundreds of ilex vomitoria “shillings” for an upcoming workshop I’m doing in June.

Here he is lost in the sea of green.
Ilex are one of my favorite species for bonsai; they have small leaves, live well in pot culture, bud back well and are cold hardy.

They get fat trunks and have awesome taper. Like the sumo I am demonstrating on here.
They can get leaf miners, snow scale and aphids (on new growth).
The worst problem is black spot fungus. But that is easily controlled with a fungicide.

A hollow trunk shohin and an exposed root ilex.