We bought our first tree in 1979, a little procumbens juniper from a nursery, in a plastic pot, for about four dollars. We nearly killed it three times. It is still with us, twenty years later, and it is the first thing we show visitors. This page is what we wish someone had told us in 1979.

Bonsai is not a kind of tree. It is an ordinary tree, kept small in a shallow pot, shaped over years to look like an old tree in nature. The word means "planted in a tray." Anyone can do it. The only thing it truly requires is patience, and the willingness to check on a plant every single day for the rest of its life, which may be longer than yours. If that sounds like a burden, it is not the hobby for you. If it sounds like a privilege, welcome.

Good trees to start with

Start with something forgiving and cheap. Do not start with the $200 tree at the show; start with nursery stock and learn on it.

• Juniper (outdoors). The classic beginner's tree and still our favorite. Procumbens nana, the low spreading kind sold as a ground cover, is sold at every garden center for a few dollars in a one-gallon can. Tough, takes wiring well, and its foliage can be pinched into pads. It must live outside. It will die in the house, slowly, over months, while looking fine, which is how the shopping-mall "bonsai" sellers stay in business.
• Chinese elm (outdoors, or a bright window in a pinch). Small leaves, fine twigging, buds back readily from old wood, and it forgives a missed watering better than most. It drops its leaves in fall if kept outside; that is normal.
• Ficus (indoors). If you truly have nowhere outside, a ficus is the tree for you. It tolerates indoor light and dry air better than anything else we have tried. Give it the brightest window you own.
• Also good: trident maple, cotoneaster, boxwood, and for those with more room, larch and Japanese black pine, which we do not recommend until you have kept a juniper alive for two years.

Watering: the whole hobby, really

More bonsai die of watering than of everything else combined. A tree in a shallow pot has very little soil, and that soil can go from wet to bone dry in one hot afternoon. So: check every tree every day. Put a finger in the soil, or lift the pot and feel the weight. When the top of the soil is just beginning to dry, water thoroughly, until it runs out the drainage holes, then water again a minute later to be sure. Do not water on a schedule; water when the tree needs it, which in July may be twice a day and in November may be twice a week.

Never let it dry out completely. A juniper that goes bone dry once may not show it for weeks, and by then it is already gone. We lost two trees this way in our first three years, both while we were on vacation. Now a neighbor waters for us and we give her a written list.

Use a watering can with a fine rose, or a hose nozzle on a soft setting. Rain water is best; tap water is fine. Mist the foliage in hot weather if you like, but misting is not watering.

Soil

Bonsai soil is not dirt. It is a coarse, gritty, fast-draining mix, so that water runs through freely, air gets to the roots, and the roots never sit in a puddle. Potting soil from a bag holds too much water and packs down; roots rot in it. Our mix for most trees is roughly equal parts of a fired clay (the Japanese product is called akadama; small-grain calcined clay from the auto parts store, sold as oil absorbent, is a common substitute), coarse sand or fine gravel, and sifted pine bark. Sift out the dust. The dust is what kills drainage. Conifers get a little more grit; deciduous trees a little more bark. There are as many recipes as there are growers; the principle is the same: it must drain.

Wiring, in general terms

Wire is how you put a bend in a branch and hold it there until the branch has grown enough wood to hold the shape itself. You wrap annealed copper or aluminum wire around the branch in even spirals, at about a 45-degree angle, snug but not tight, anchoring one end in the soil or around the trunk, and then you bend the branch gently to where you want it. The wire should be about a third the thickness of the branch. Aluminum is easier for beginners; copper holds better.

The important part is taking it off. Branches thicken, and a wire left on too long cuts into the bark and leaves spiral scars that last for years. Check wired branches every few weeks. On a fast-growing tree in spring, the wire may need to come off in a couple of months. On a juniper it may stay a year. Cut it off in pieces with wire cutters; never unwind it, which breaks branches. If the branch springs back when the wire is off, wire it again in a slightly different spot. Practice on a branch you intend to cut off anyway. We still do.

Repotting

Every two or three years for young trees, less often for old ones, the roots fill the pot and the tree must be repotted. This is done in early spring, just as the buds begin to swell and before the leaves open, when the tree is about to grow and can heal. Take the tree out, comb out the outer roots with a chopstick, cut back perhaps a third of the root mass (this is the part that scares beginners; the tree does not mind), put fresh soil in the pot with a layer of coarser grit at the bottom, settle the tree back in, and tie it down with wire through the drainage holes so it cannot rock. Water well. Keep it out of wind and hot sun for a couple of weeks. Do not fertilize until it has started growing again.

Winter care: they are not houseplants

This is the one that costs beginners the most trees. Junipers, elms, maples, pines and every other temperate tree need a cold winter dormancy. Bring one into a heated house in November and it will wake up, try to grow in the dark, and exhaust itself. Leave them outside. What they need protection from is not the cold itself but the roots freezing solid in a shallow pot, and drying winds. Once the tree has gone dormant and the first hard frosts have passed, we move ours to a spot out of the wind against the north side of the garage, set the pots on the ground and heel them in with mulch or dry leaves up over the rim, or put the smaller ones in a cold frame. An unheated garage or shed with a window works too. They still need water through the winter, though much less; check them on mild days. In spring, bring them out gradually. The ficus, of course, comes inside; it is the exception.

The classical styles

Styles are names for the shapes old trees take in nature. Knowing them helps you look at your nursery juniper and see what it wants to be.

Our oldest tree

The juniper from 1979. Nursery stock, a procumbens nana, bought at a garden center that is now a carpet store. For the first five years it lived in a plastic pot on the back step and we mostly just kept it alive. In 1984 Sachiko took a class at the botanical garden and came home and repotted it into a proper shallow oval pot and wired the first real branch, and that is the year we count as its beginning as a bonsai. It is an informal upright, about fourteen inches tall now, with a trunk a little thicker than a broom handle and a section of deadwood on the left side where a branch died in the winter of 1993 and we left it, stripped and bleached, the way old junipers have in the mountains. It has been repotted six times. It has been to four club shows and won a ribbon at one. Our photos of it are in an album, not on this page yet; we do not own a scanner and are not sure we want one. Perhaps we will borrow our nephew's.

Mistakes we made, so you don't have to

1. We kept our first juniper on the kitchen windowsill for the first winter. It survived only because Sachiko's mother told us in February to put it outside, and we listened.
2. We used potting soil. Everything sat wet. We lost a cotoneaster to root rot before we understood why.
3. We went on vacation for ten days in August 1981 and asked no one to water. Two trees.
4. Ken left wire on a trident maple through an entire growing season. The scars took six years to disappear.
5. We bought a beautiful, expensive, finished tree at a show in 1986 before we knew how to care for a pine. We do not talk about it.
6. We fertilized a freshly repotted tree because we were eager. Burned roots. It lived, barely.
7. We pruned a tree in the fall because it looked untidy. Do the big pruning in spring, when the tree can recover. Fall is for looking.

Every one of these is a watering, timing or patience mistake. None of them was about skill. That is the whole lesson.

Our club's fall show: October 9 and 10, 1999 Our bonsai society's annual fall exhibit is Saturday, October 9, from 10 to 5, and Sunday, October 10, from noon to 4, in the conservatory building at the city botanical garden. About forty trees from members, free with garden admission. There will be a beginners' demonstration both days at 2 pm, where a member styles a nursery juniper from start to finish in about an hour and then raffles it off, and a sales table of starter trees, pots, wire and soil. Ken is doing the Sunday demonstration. Sachiko is showing the 1979 juniper and a five-tree elm forest. Please come and say hello; we are the ones near the door telling people not to buy the mall bonsai. The society meets the second Tuesday of each month, 7 pm, same building. Visitors welcome. Dues are $15 a year, which mostly pays for the newsletter and the coffee.

Neighbors: Sakura Asian Grocery · Eastside Judo Club · African Violet Addict · Willow Creek Garden Center
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Questions are welcome: [email protected]. We answer in the evenings, after the watering.

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Last updated September 21, 1999. © 1999 Ken and Sachiko I.