Year One
I can reflect on my first year with positive experiences, as well as hard lessons learned.
In my first two months, I collected around 20 trees & seedlings—mostly online orders or nursery material. In the following ten months, I further collected 50-70 trees & seedlings (some were acquired as redundant or multiple plants).
After my good fortune of attending the Pacific Bonsai Expo (Nov 2022), I have since joined a local club (Sei Boku Bonsai Kai, San Mateo) and further attended more club shows and public gardens.
What draws me to the whole of bonsai is that I like to work with my hands and learn new skills—I like gardening, woodworking, and ceramics. What started out as an inspired bonsai bench, itching for a carpentry project—has expanded to a second tiered-bench, plant shelving and set up a potting station, now a system of building grow-boxes on-demand. Slowly assembled the essential bonsai tools. Recently collected a number of quality pots for future tree pairings.
A great joy has been to reconnect with a friend with private property in our neighboring mountains—where she let me collect younger Yamadori conifers, longer-term projects.
One recommendation for bonsai neophytes is to collect with a simple plan.
Balance their collection with a narrower range of species, and wider range of tree maturities.
Better to know a few trees well, than to complicate learning with too many differing care needs.
Trees may die or get very weak, and not always a result of your best efforts—these are lessons to learn; this is also helpful when collecting a few redundant species for occasional losses. Multiples enable, if not encourages, creativity and experimentation—in care or styling. Redundant trees also allow you to select the more preferred or better styled tree, and allow you to free up bench space by offering or selling the lesser.
Practice on nursery stock, or visit local club shows for affordable material
Look for “Yardadori” mature material, like Japanese boxwoods from local ads
While seemingly more affordable to by tree seedlings or young pre-bonsai, there is only so much you can do besides learning horticulture. It’s a long term investment of time, that should not be a primary focus of your resources and bench space.
Enjoy finishing off at least one mature tree, or invest in a 3 yr, 5 yr and 10 yr specimens to learn and practice a chosen species in the different phases of development. Japanese Black Pine or Korean Hornbeam, for example.
Unless the material
Regret and lessons learned
Every time I bend a branch and it breaks, I wish I could rewind. Often my wiring is poor, looser, or unsupported. I should slowly bend left & right before an aggressive your down.
When using force (or a powered rotary tool), there is a high chance of a slipped hand or tool and an unplanned cut or break.
Slow down on buying seeds and seedlings, rather invest in air-layered or thicker pre-bonsai.
Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize. Elevate plants with fertilizer—out of reach of our dog.
Don’t prune for tertiary branches or mature trees—until they are mature.