If you’re a fan of oak bonsai, you’ve likely heard of John “JT” Thompson. For those who don’t know JT, he’s one of the most generous bonsai teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’d seen JT’s trees in exhibits for years but I hadn’t seen his collection until last week when I visited to […]
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Bonsai Tonight features how-to articles, tips on growing trees from scratch, and reports from exhibits in the U.S. and Japan. See the top How-to Guides, visit the Complete Post Archive for a list of all posts, or start browsing recent posts below.
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Recent Posts
Searching for the front of a broom-style zelkova
Earlier this year, I picked up a zelkova in need of repotting. I cleared out the old soil and let the tree grow freely. Now that it’s showing signs of great health, I thought I’d start working on the branches. Before getting to work, I thought about where the front might be. I didn’t find […]
Decandling season wrap-up
Towards the end of decandling season (mid-July where I live), I make a point of checking every pine in the garden to see if it’s a candidate for decandling. Most of my pines are young and don’t require this work, but there are a number of trees between five and ten years old that can […]
Rehabilitating a coast live oak – part 2
It took a while to get to this point, but my semi-cascade coast live oak put on enough new growth to warrant pruning this year. Here’s a photo of the tree from 2019 (see “Rehabilitating a coast live oak – part 1” for details). Coast live oak – March, 2019 And here is a photo […]
Refining a slender Korean hornbeam
A year-and-a-half ago, I started working on a Korean hornbeam by removing a few branches and repotting the tree (see “Defining the branch structure” for details). After pruning and repotting, January, 2020 I let the tree grow freely last year to gain strength after an extensive repot. Here’s the tree last July. July, 2020 By […]