The essence of bonsai is to evoke the spirit of nature. Your bonsai can take you to the places you love. The first Section--"Spirit of Nature~Hand of Man" is for inspiration, but also presents the styles, designs and containers of this 800+ year old Japanese art/craft. [7]

Detailed practical information (step-by-step) on creating bonsai: Plant selection, starting (seed, cuttings, grafting, air layering, dividing, importing), planting, pruning and training, and showcasing. With Index.

Tips:

"Viewing bonsai should be a kind of rest, a green pause in the staccato pace of daily life, a brief contact with nature's great calm." [8]

"Bonsai" means "planted in a tray". [51]

A lot of this is about getting results very gradually. "Don't expect to chop away enormous amounts of roots all at one time to get a canned tree into a small bonsai container. Few plants will survive this treatment." [37] And a lot is about really protecting the plant--from sun, drying air exposures to the roots, droughts, floods, etc.

Gathering trees in the wild - early spring, between root and new buds. Collapsible army shovel, big sharp shears, moss, pry bar, burlap and balling nails with string; water and sprayer. Trim 1/2 the taproot - wait a year to trim the rest. Two-year countdown.[50] Interestingly, in Japan, the forests are virtually stripped of old natural specimens by collectors. {I always collect moss and fungus for the bed as well.}

Tools [51, 75] -- for preparing plant, pot, and presenting shelf: long knife, kitchen spatula, pruning shears, garden trowel, chopsticks, bucket of water, vitamin B, container(s), bucket of soil, sprinkling can, sprayer, moss, rocks, lichen, sterilized tray (bleached), wire mesh, wire (var.), small trimmers (var.), cleaning brushes, nipper (concave depression), small shears. Finally, an outside corner where you have light, and spills won't make a mess. (The "tokonoma" [79]) ( )

This find surprised me. I had long associated Sunset craft books with being chintzy manuals for family crafts. However, after looking at all of the other books on the used bookstore shelf about bonsai, I found that this was the only one that had detailed information on how to start a bonsai from scratch.

While all of the other books had, essentially, "Step 1: go buy a bonsai," Bonsai by Sunset had, "Step 1: start growing a tree by seed, cutting, or digging up a specimen. Here is how to do all three."

Perhaps when I start to do more bonsai, I will learn that this book doesn't have as much useful information as I think, but for someone just starting out, it gives a pretty nice overview. It also has some good gardening information in general. I recommend it for anyone starting out with bonsai.

Another pretty good book about the Japanese art of growing minature trees. ( )

A pretty good book about the Japanese art of growing miniature trees. ( )