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
Live Oak Work – 2016 – Part 1
Back in January I collected four large live oaks, Quercus virginiana, from a good bonsai friend's property. Collectible live oaks are not that plentiful where I live, despite the fact that we have some of the most magnificent old specimens anywhere. Given the...
Bald Cypress Work – 2016 – Part 3
We've been following the development of this bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, since last year when I first collected and direct-potted it. BC grow so quickly that it's very easy to develop them completely in a bonsai pot, provided of course you begin with a suitable...
Developing A Few Bonsai
Spring is in full force, meaning bonsai development is more or less a matter of moving from one tree to the next and doing pruning, pinching, wiring, unwiring, and on and on. Only repotting season is as intense. Today, among others, I worked on the three trees...
Oaks As Bonsai
I think we don't grow enough oaks as bonsai. As a genus, Quercus is one of the more agreeable out there. Aside from being strong as oaks (ha!), this genus features a vast number of choices suitable to pot culture. I've written before about live oak and willow oak...
Chinese Privet Bonsai – Initial Styling
I showed you this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, earlier in the season. I collected it in Winter 2016 and direct-potted it into this nice Byron Myrick oval. Because it had a complete trunk, nice movement and taper into the apex where I knew I could grow a crown...
New Bonsai In The Making
I love spring because there's always new material to work on. That's one great thing about bonsai: no two are exactly alike. Even though any given species has a particular growth habit, when you start building a bonsai you don't know for sure exactly where your...
Developing A Sweetgum Bonsai
Several years ago I began growing the Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, you see below in a nursery container. It grew fairly typically for Sweetgum, nice and straight as it reached for the sun attempting to become 80 feet tall. Periodically I would chop the growing...
A Massive Trident Maple Gets Some Attention
About four years ago I acquired this trident maple, Acer buergerianum, from a bonsai friend. He had been growing it in his field bed for several years prior and wanted to get rid of it. I gladly agreed to saw it out of the ground - which, way too much time later...
A Couple Of New Trees On The Way
Now that spring has taken hold, a number of my newly collected specimens are starting to get established and closer to their initial training. One thing I like to do whenever feasible is to directly pot new trees into bonsai containers. I do this in part because it...