FREE Online Bonsai Guide

How To Grow, Sculpt, Prune and Trim Bonsai Trees

What You'll Find In This Guide:

 Introduction
 Bonsai History
 Bonsai Styles
    Formal Upright
    Informal Upright
    Slanting
    Cascade
    Semi-Cascade
 Growing Indoors or Outdoors
 Bonsai Tool Box
 Grow From Seeds or Buy Trees?
 Trees Best Suited For Bonsai
 What to Look For In Your Tree
 Planting Your Bonsai
 Pruning and Trimming
 Wiring
 When to Wire
 Watering and Fertilizing
 Re-potting your Bonsai
 Seasonal Care
 Displaying Your Bonsai
 General Tips
 Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

"Bonsai art is the display of a landscape - without the landscape."
--Nobu Kajiwara

This quote couldn’t be truer.  Growing and sculpting bonsai trees can be quite a satisfying hobby.  It is a hobby; however, that requires a tremendous amount of patience.  When you take a simple sapling and mold it to your desire, you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful piece of art you can truly be proud of!

The term bonsai literally means plant in a pot or tray planting.  Bonsai however is much more than simply a plant in a pot. The goal of bonsai is to create the appearance of great size and age. This is accomplished by creating a bonsai with strong roots that extend in all directions, creating a sense of stability, a large trunk which tapers as it goes upward, a clear apex, and well formed and well placed branches. These features all combine to create a careful blend of symmetry, balance and proportion. It also must be displayed in a pot which harmonizes well with the plant material.

Bonsai is the art of growing trees in a confined space to simulate certain environmental conditions such as great age, extreme weathering, twisted or contorted form, landscape, or other factors.  Bonsai trees are modeled on and take inspiration from nature.  The idea of bonsai is to recreate some of nature's most stunning and beautiful effects on trees which are reduced in scale.

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