This past weekend, Bay Island Bonsai held their 18th annual exhibit at the Lakeside Garden Center in Oakland, California. Following the club’s tradition, the membership recognized the top tree in each of several categories with Members Choice Awards. Here are photos of this year’s award-winning trees, starting with a large white pine shown at the […]
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Tips for anchoring bonsai wire
At the outset of this series, I mentioned that nine of the ten items we’d cover are easy and that one is difficult. Number nine is difficult: learning what it means to properly anchor your wire. This is different from learning how to anchor your wire. Mastering wiring requires good instruction and lots of practice. […]
How to secure bonsai in the pot
When I first heard that bonsai are commonly wired into the pot I thought, “That sounds crazy – you must be kidding me!” Over the years I’d planted hundreds, if not thousands, of plants in containers without wire for a retail nursery. The practice sounded extraneous and made me think that bonsai people were overly concerned […]
Tips for using basic bonsai tools
The most basic bonsai tools – scissors, concave cutters, tweezers, wire cutters and pliers – are pretty easy to use. Except for the concave cutter, all have non-bonsai counterparts with which we are familiar, and the concave cutter isn’t too tricky to figure out. Rather than discuss each in detail, I’ll offer a simple tip […]
Distinguishing vigorous growth from healthy growth in bonsai
One of the more important distinctions to make when evaluating bonsai is whether or not a tree is ready to be worked on. Weak trees need to regain strength and sick trees need to regain health before any major work is done. This goes for detail wiring, heavy bending or major cutback. Repotting is an […]