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
Repotting A Large Hawthorn
I collected this Mayhaw, Crataegus aestivalus, in 2010 and potted it in this beautiful Byron Myrick oval in 2012. It's grown, from a bare trunk, pretty happily since I first got it. I did a thread-graft to create a second branch (on the left) back in 2011. I think...
Harvesting Another Chinese Elm
We got some rain this week - it's been without a doubt the most miserable weather of the winter - so my "mini-swamp" is partly full, as you can see in this photo. I know spring is not far off, because I'm getting budding on a number of "early risers." You can see...
Harvesting a Chinese Elm
The second thing to bud out in spring, right behind crab apples, is Chinese elms. Today I decided to lift a tree I've been growing in the ground for the past five years. Here's the tree in the ground. If you look closely you can see where I chopped the trunk three...
The Humble Bud – Sign of Things to Come
When collecting deciduous trees, we usually end up with nothing but a trunk. Well, so it seems. For most species, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, one of the fascinating things about the growth of woody plants is that they produce buds, from which...
Bald Cypress Year Three Work
I collected this bald cypress in January 2013. I couldn't resist a great flaring base, great trunk movement, twisting gray bark, and that interesting "elbow" on the right-hand flaring root. I let the tree grow out unrestrained in 2013. When 2014 came, I selected the...
Bald Cypress Collecting – Part 2
I collected more bald cypress today. As I suspected would happen, many are budding out. This shouldn't present any problem with their surviving, but it certainly will delay their rebudding. Still, how can you say no to really nice bald cypress? Here's one of the...
Do Trees Remember? (A Bald Cypress Story)
You've seen this cypress before. I collected it about a year ago, about 120 miles south of where I am. At the time of collection, it and the other surrounding cypresses had already leafed out in their fresh pre-spring foliage. It got chopped back, along with the...
Hornbeam Collecting
Yesterday was my first collecting trip of 2015 for American hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana. If you've been following my blog posts for a while, you know American hornbeam is right at the top of my list for best bonsai species. It's easy to collect, the survival rate...
Decisions, Decisions
The technique of creating bonsai comes down to one basic principle: making a series of decisions that guide a living tree or shrub toward becoming a miniaturized version of its normal self. This may seem obvious when you think about it, but often we have this vision...