The Bonsai Files
Your free access to general and how-to articles, The Bonsai Files. Detailed and filled with bonsai pictures, Zach shows you step-by-step how he designs bonsai and provides before, during, and after images.
The Bonsai Files
This May End Up Being A Progression
You may remember my tall Swamp maple, Acer rubrum 'drummondii,' from last fall. It's been on death watch since I brought it home in 2017. Well, it's not dead yet nor is it dying. I don't yet see any signs of deterioration that have plagued my attempts to...
Water-Elm #46
When we found this Water-elm last August (2018), I knew it was going in my collection. I had lost a similar specimen back in 2014. There's something about those two trunks! Today (5/25/19) it was time to style and pot this tree. Most of the bonsai is there;...
Making Nice Bonsai From Ordinary Material
This is a run of the mill Bald cypress seedling (about 3 years old in 2017) that I decided to play around with in July of that year. How about a windswept cypress, I thought? So I wired it from bottom to top and stuck it in a Byron Myrick oval I had on hand. ...
Trumpet Vine Bonsai
I lifted this Trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, in June of 2017. Why not go straight to a bonsai pot with it? While this is not a good idea most of the time, vines are hard to kill and are reliable at producing roots. Here's the tree a year later. The growth...
An American Elm Gets Potted
Every tree you work on will eventually reach a state where it's got to go into a bonsai pot. Sometimes we delay doing so, and while that's okay you don't want to push any tree too far or you risk decline and, of course, the D word. This American elm, Ulmus...
BC Forest Update And Work
You may remember this Bald cypress forest from my recent blog about it. I had replaced two of the trees and added another two. Those new additions are now growing, so today seemed like a perfect time to do some work on the taller specimens. First order of...
Potting Up A Water-Elm
We collected this nice smaller Water-elm in August of 2018. By October the shoots were strong enough for an initial wiring. Doesn't look like much, does it? But the trunk base is 2" at the soil, and with the trunk chop at 11" I should be able to make a nice...
Sunday Evening Hawthorn Notes
Yesterday was my first one-on-one workshop for 2019. We got a lot of work done, mostly on three large BCs. This is a great time of year to do just about everything bonsai. Problem is, it's hard to get it all done! Right now in my garden we've completed first flush,...
A Very Big Water-Elm Gets Styled
This is one big Water-elm! We collected it in July of 2018, and it recovered nicely last summer and fall. The base on this tree is 4" in diameter above the root crown, and it's chopped at 29". When all is said and done, I'll have a real "statement" Water-elm...