Shopping for pre-bonsai

The process of looking for pre-bonsai can differ from person to person depending on one’s interest in growing bonsai. You can select trees that give you an opportunity to work on skills you want to improve, or buy a tree with great potential that requires a significant amount time to develop. In either case, the goal is typically the same: to find the best trunk possible (the tree with the greatest potential) that’s within your budget.

Walking around this year’s Expo, I noticed that a number of the vendors had some great pre-bonsai available. Here are some fantastic trees from Copper Creek Bonsai.

Itoigawa juniper #1

Itoigawa juniper #2

Itoigawa juniper #3

It’s a relatively easy exercise to imagine what these junipers might look like as developed bonsai. But because they aren’t growing in bonsai pots and lack a mature silhouette, not everyone who walks by understands what a great starting point trees like this can be. Within as little as two years, each of these trees could be a good fit for a club show. And if additional time were invested in trunk development, these could become fantastic shohin bonsai.

Copper Creek grows pines too.

White pine

Black pine

Just across from Copper Creek in the vendor area were trees from Cedar Rose Nursery. Located in Placerville, California, Cedar Rose propagates and grows a variety of species and specializes in deciduous material. I visited last week to see what they’re working on.

Japanese maples growing in the ground

Shimpaku junipers

The pre-bonsai at Cedar Rose Nursery provide a good example of what you can expect from field-grown deciduous species – trunks that are ready for branch refinement.

Chinese quince

Styrax

Trident maple

Trees at this stage of development are perfect for learning basic deciduous techniques such as pruning, pinching, wiring, defoliating, and thread grafting. It’s common to find wounds that need healing so you can practice that too.

To get the most out of these trees, you might find you want to grow additional sections of the trunk. For example, the trident maple below has two nice sections that taper from large to medium, but there’s no small section above that. By selecting a runner and growing the next section of the trunk – work that may require a year or two, you will have you a pretty good starting point for developing a small tree in a relatively short time.

Field-grown trident maple

Cedar Rose Nursery releases a limited number of field-grown trees periodically throughout winter so check back regularly to get an idea of what’s available. It’s also a good resource for cuttings and seedlings of harder to find species like hackberry, dawn redwood, blue atlas cedar, stewartia, Korean hornbeam, Hakone rose, star magnolia, and contorted Fuji cherry, among others.

The alternative to working with pre-bonsai is to start with a tree that already looks like a bonsai or to do everything from scratch. I’ve enjoyed working on the middle stages of development for years so I’m a fan of starting with trunks that were grown for bonsai and then getting to work on everything that follows, the fun and challenging techniques that keep us busy year after year.