What is a Bonsai?
The Japanese word ‘bonsai’ means ‘a tree in a pot’, but more correctly it is a tree that has had styling, shaping and attention to make it look like an older tree with character in nature. It is more than a mere tree in a pot.
A bonsai is a tree that is kept small by cutting the top and kept healthy by pruning the roots. As a living thing, a bonsai works exactly the same way as the trees growing in the ground. It needs sunshine, water and nutrients.
Bonsai is a living art form. The tree is your canvas. It does not matter how old a bonsai is, what matters is how old and how beautiful it looks. The oldest bonsai in the world are in the Japanese Emperor’s collection. Some of them are estimated to be 800 years old.
What are the most important things to learn about bonsai?
Correct watering, correct soil, appropriate sunlight, correct fertilising, protection from pests and diseases and patience are the key. If you can grow and care for a tree in your garden, you will be able to grow and care for a Bonsai. However, you’ll also need an understanding of how a tree grows, its root system and the correct seasonal timing for all the necessary maintenance such as root pruning, branch cutting and foliage trimming is vital to success.
If you learn how to grow and keep a tree healthy then you can style it. A bonsai is styled by both cutting to encourage growth in certain areas and/or wiring to shape and control branch shapes. There are styling techniques and guidelines available, that is the artistic side. The health of a tree is more important than its style. Its style can be continually altered because the tree is always growing.
The only “finished” bonsai is a dead bonsai.
What is NOT a bonsai?
So many pseudo bonsai are now sold in shops, that the public is largely unaware of what a bonsai actually is. A bonsai is not simply a sprig of a plant put in a small pot.
Just because a tree is in a pot does not make it a bonsai and an unstyled and/or unhealthy tree growing in a bonsai pot is definitely NOT a bonsai.