Chinese elm help, dropped all leafs!

[rockm]

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It’s incredibly beautiful in my opinion! Was a present for my birthday off my partner!

I am going to order some wrap so i can overwinter it! It’s still around 15/17c in the day in england currently

Get rid of the humidity tray. It's useless and a potential problem.

Second find a sheltered spot in your yard with a garden bed. Next month, after a few frosts put a brick or two on the surface of the mulched garden bed, place the pot (it should be as level as possible) on the bricks insuring the drain holes aren't blocked. Then pile mulch up a couple of inches over the top of the soil surface in the pot. Leave it be until spring. Make sure it doesn't dry out.

 

[Jack12342]

Get rid of the humidity tray. It's useless and a potential problem.

Second find a sheltered spot in your yard with a garden bed. Next month, after a few frosts put a brick or two on the surface of the mulched garden bed, place the pot (it should be as level as possible) on the bricks insuring the drain holes aren't blocked. Then pile mulch up a couple of inches over the top of the soil surface in the pot. Leave it be until spring. Make sure it doesn't dry out.

Hummidty tray is now gone!!

I literally had just watered the plant before the photo! It was beginning to get a little bit dry! It’s been 15/17c all week here!


So i currently live in a new build area so don’t have any flower beds just area’s with bark and some flowers!

What do you mean by mulch? Soil?

I can move the bark and create a little area of soil!

Do you have a link or a picture so i can try to visualise what you mean? I have seen people burying there bonsai’s in the garden! My soil here is very clay heavy!

 

[rockm]

Hummidty tray is now gone!!

I literally had just watered the plant before the photo! It was beginning to get a little bit dry! It’s been 15/17c all week here!


So i currently live in a new build area so don’t have any flower beds just area’s with bark and some flowers!

What do you mean by mulch? Soil?

I can move the bark and create a little area of soil!

Do you have a link or a picture so i can try to visualise what you mean? I have seen people burying there bonsai’s in the garden! My soil here is very clay heavy!
View attachment 617102

You do NOT want to bury the pot in the ground. It's unnecessary and can harm your tree. When you dig a hole in the ground, putting the pot below soil level, you have basically created a bowl that will fill with water when it rains. That will rot and kill roots in the submerged pot.

Simply placing the pot on gravel on the ground will work as a foundation. The trick is to make sure the drain holes in the bottom of the pot ARE NOT BLOCKED by the soil surface. I put my trees on paving bricks to keep them from coming in contact with the ground.

Once in place, try to make sure the pot is level and drains.

THEN get a bag of shredded hardwood mulch or three and BURY THE POT IN MULCH UPTO THE FIRST THIRD OF THE TRUNK. Bigger mulch piles protect better, so don't just make a small mound around the pot. What you are doing is creating a covering that traps ambient "heat" from the ground. Heat is relative. The ground is warmer than the air. The mulch prevents air from getting at the pot. The more surface area of an object exposed to cold air, the quicker and more deeply it will freeze (And BTW freezing isn't really a bad thing for overwintering temperate trees, as long as temperatures don't get below 20 F or so in the root zone for days at a time.

Being in the UK, this might be overkill. Here in the states we tend to have more temperature extremes. I'm in USDA zone 7-which is relatively mild winter-wise for the U.S. We do get subzero F (-17C) occasionally in Jan. and Feb.

This is one of the best videos on overwintering out there.

and this provides some extra info on the actual mechanics of how things work:

Over Wintering Bonsai