The Bay Area Bonsai Associates held their 39th annual exhibit last weekend at the Lake Merritt Garden Center in Oakland, California. It’s been a few years since I last posted photos from the BABA show and I’m glad I have the chance to do so this year as there were some great trees on display […]
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The Little Book of Bonsai – a look at what’s inside
A few weeks ago I told the story of how The Little Book of Bonsai came to be. Today I’d like to share details about who it’s for and what’s inside. I wrote the book for people who are new to bonsai. It’s illustrated with images of trees from my collection and the collections of […]
Pruning to support development goals on crabapple pre-bonsai
When pre-bonsai are in the trunk-thickening phase, the work is simple – prune to avoid unwanted swelling and wire new shoots where you want movement. I’ve been doing this work on a batch of crabapples I started from seed for several years now. Young crabapple Trunk detail To encourage new buds along the trunk, I […]
Refining a field-grown black pine
The pine below is several years out of the ground and is showing signs of becoming a bonsai. Japanese black pine In the past year, I wired the primary branches and made two grafts near the apex. This winter, I thinned crowded areas and rewired the branches. Here’s the tree after thinning. After pruning and […]
Pot selection exercise – dwarf wisteria
Earlier this week, I presented a program on repotting for the East Bay Bonsai Society. We started by covering techniques for securing trees into containers based on the numbers of holes in the pot (see “Securing” for details). Next we looked at the process with a live tree – a dwarf wisteria. After performing the […]