Where to Start Make Bonsai

A garden center can be the best resource facility in your area. The staff at a good garden center should be knowledgeable and helpful, willing to answer your question even if they have to search out the information. These answers should be given in a manner you can easily understand and should encourage you to ask more questions. Look for a center that is clean and insect-free, one with various kinds of plants that appear to be healthy and well cared for.

bonsai garden centre

Go to The Garden Center in Your Area

It is often written that out behind the garden center you will find material that has been rejected because it does not conform to the uniform look of the rest of that size and species of stock. Because the tree is different, twisted, or stunted, some people think it will make a good bonsai, but this is not necessarily true. When living material is rejected and put out back, it is no longer cared for. It should not be purchased unless you plan to cultivate it until it regains the health and vigor necessary to withstand root pruning.

A garden center offers you the opportunity to observe and compare plants. Stock plants grown in containers have numerous feeding roots and little, if any, taproot. These feeding roots are important to the tree’s health.  Having the root intact in a nursery pot allows you to study the plant’s root system, knowledge that is essential for bonsai.



At the gardening center you can also observe flowering foliage and fruit tree, often in several stages of their normal growth. Azaleas are a good example of material that varies greatly, both in foliage as well as in flowers. Some azaleas grow upright; others are of the spreading variety, wider than they are tall. Such variations occur in many species of woody plants.

It is of great advantage to see what a species looks like in one-gallon container, and after several years growth, in a three – or five-gallon container. Seeing a tree at different stages gives you an indication of how a species matures.

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