John, one of my clients, called. He stated that his trees require some attention. I hadn’t heard from him in at least three years what with the lost pandemic year and all, and him being a busy businessman. There’s a word connection here. Business, business, business. I’ll have to look up the etymology because it […]

Ficus salicaria, the willow leaf fig. The tree belonged to a member of a Fort Myers study group who was downsizing her collection. Not downsizing in terms of numbers, but literally downsizing. It had to go if she couldn’t lift it. Unless we can afford large machinery and young backs to lift our trees, it […]

Well, for the life of me, I can’t find the first chop back photos for this tree, from several months ago……wait, let me check one more time…. Here we go, from May 2, 2021. It is a Ficus microcarpa that volunteered in one of my student’s yard down in SW Florida, so she dug it […]

It doesn’t look good for this tree, as you might be thinking if you’ve read my blog with any regularity. It needs some drama…. Let’s spin it around a bit, take in the whole tree… Hmmm. Where to go? It’s in an older pot. Korean I think. Hmmm…. The tree belongs to Evan, up in […]

What shall you do with a ginseng ficus, – a Ficus sea shanty We will begin with the end. Then, by the time my rambling storytelling actually gets to the end, you’ll have forgotten the end and it’ll be like the beginning again. Or something philosophic like that. It seems to be a popular and […]

Introduction If you are not familiar with the term, you will, of course, be wondering what it means so let’s get that defined first and go from there. “Tanuki” is a Japanese word that directly translated means “raccoon.” What has this to do with bonsai you must be wondering! Actually, the explanation is rather humorous. […]

The following development tips are intended for enthusiasts growing Japanese black pine from seed for shohin trees. The pines featured in this article are in their 3rd year of growth (in Spring 2021 they will be 4 years old). You may want to read my other blog posts for relevant information. Although some of the […]

I have written a number of blogs on my experiences with growing material for bonsai. You can read them here if you have not done so already. However this post summarizes much of the knowledge I have accumulated to this point, and I also managed to produce a video on the same content to demonstrate […]

When creating bonsai trees, scars are almost inevitable. Whenever possible it is best to make these scars to the back of the tree so they cannot be seen. If they are visible from the front, encouraging them to heal over is of course a strategy but sometimes this can be rather challenging for the following […]

Background A customer asked me to style this swamp cypress which was part of his collection. I thought I would video and also write about the process I followed to style the tree. The intention and hope are that this might help you to formulate an approach when you have just added a tree to […]