Bonsai Gardening - Adding Bonsai to Your Gardens
If you have a green thumb or two but not a whole lot of room to exercise your greener side bonsais are a great option.
Even if you do already spend a good chunk of your time gardening you can add another level of artistic quality to your horticultural ambiance around the yard with the addition of a bonsai or two.
It is pretty easy, but can also take years to master.
But the good news is that training bonsais and learning more about them takes time.
So you don't have to be in a rush to learn everything there is to know about how to master the art of bonsais in a week or two.
Bonsai comes from the Japanese words 'bon" meaning pot and "sai" meaning tree.
Potted tree would be a pretty literal translation.
Exactly where the whole idea came from originally in the east is up for grabs.
Maybe it was Buddhist monks from China in the Han or Ming dynasty, but no one really knows for sure.
What we do know is that over the last 2,000 years the Japanese have developed those little potted plants into a true art form.
There are even Bonsai competitions and shows.
Trees are put into categories based on size, down to as small as a couple of inches.
And that is where we should probably mention where the art of bonsais lies.
It is not just growing a tree in a little pot.
It is something a bit more when it comes to making great bonsai trees and plants.
The trick is trying to get the thing to look like a miniature version of a much larger tree.
You want bonsais to look like you took a huge tree in the wild and blasted it with a shrink ray or something so that it morphed down to a few inches.
And that can be a little tricky.
Making branches on small young trees look weathered and twisted and mature means a lot of dwarfing, training and pruning - of both limbs and roots.
Most folks serious about bonsais actually take all of their plant stock from the wild and then train the plant to grow in the pot.
This always gives a better finished look, but it's also tough to take plants that are already on the very brink of survival and transplant them without killing them.
Bonsai artists will spend months hiking in search of these great specimens and then carefully time the harvest to just a few good weeks a year.
They also choose plants that grow naturally in the region so that they have the best chance of survival.
You won't see a lot of indoor bonsai trees in Japan, most will be kept outdoors like the original plants.
But there are a lot of options for bonsai plants indoors, you just have to make sure that you can keep the same kind of plant both alive and thriving in your house before you subject it to the rigors of dwarfing and pot training.
Even if you do already spend a good chunk of your time gardening you can add another level of artistic quality to your horticultural ambiance around the yard with the addition of a bonsai or two.
It is pretty easy, but can also take years to master.
But the good news is that training bonsais and learning more about them takes time.
So you don't have to be in a rush to learn everything there is to know about how to master the art of bonsais in a week or two.
Bonsai comes from the Japanese words 'bon" meaning pot and "sai" meaning tree.
Potted tree would be a pretty literal translation.
Exactly where the whole idea came from originally in the east is up for grabs.
Maybe it was Buddhist monks from China in the Han or Ming dynasty, but no one really knows for sure.
What we do know is that over the last 2,000 years the Japanese have developed those little potted plants into a true art form.
There are even Bonsai competitions and shows.
Trees are put into categories based on size, down to as small as a couple of inches.
And that is where we should probably mention where the art of bonsais lies.
It is not just growing a tree in a little pot.
It is something a bit more when it comes to making great bonsai trees and plants.
The trick is trying to get the thing to look like a miniature version of a much larger tree.
You want bonsais to look like you took a huge tree in the wild and blasted it with a shrink ray or something so that it morphed down to a few inches.
And that can be a little tricky.
Making branches on small young trees look weathered and twisted and mature means a lot of dwarfing, training and pruning - of both limbs and roots.
Most folks serious about bonsais actually take all of their plant stock from the wild and then train the plant to grow in the pot.
This always gives a better finished look, but it's also tough to take plants that are already on the very brink of survival and transplant them without killing them.
Bonsai artists will spend months hiking in search of these great specimens and then carefully time the harvest to just a few good weeks a year.
They also choose plants that grow naturally in the region so that they have the best chance of survival.
You won't see a lot of indoor bonsai trees in Japan, most will be kept outdoors like the original plants.
But there are a lot of options for bonsai plants indoors, you just have to make sure that you can keep the same kind of plant both alive and thriving in your house before you subject it to the rigors of dwarfing and pot training.
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