A Beginner’s Guide Imagine you’re watering your garden with a hose. If you just spray water everywhere, most of it lands on the sidewalk, evaporates in the sun, or runs off down the driveway. But if you carefully water just around each plant’s roots, you use way less water and your plants actually grow better….
The Week I Almost Lost My Entire Collection It was late spring 2019, and I thought everything was going great. My bonsai were pushing strong growth, the weather was warming up, and I was feeling confident. Then I noticed something odd on my favorite Chinese Elm. A few leaves had small brown spots. “Probably nothing,”…
Growing a bonsai tree is like creating living art, and it all starts beneath the surface—with the roots. If you’re just starting your bonsai journey, understanding bonsai roots is essential for keeping your miniature tree healthy and beautiful. What Makes Bonsai Roots Special? Bonsai roots are quite different from regular tree roots. In nature, trees…
The Field That Changed Everything In 2018, I inherited my grandfather’s 40-acre farm in Iowa. The soil was tired—really tired. After decades of conventional corn and soybean rotation with heavy tillage and synthetic inputs, the topsoil was thin, compacted, and lifeless. I could barely find an earthworm if I dug for an hour. My first…
The Tree That Humbled Me In 2016, I thought I was getting pretty good at bonsai. I had successfully kept several junipers alive for a few years, my maples were thriving, and I was feeling confident. So when I saw a beautiful Needle Juniper (Juniperus rigida) at a bonsai show, I bought it without hesitation….
The Tree That Survived My Freezing Winter In the winter of 2017, we had a cold snap in my area that dropped temperatures to negative 20°F for three nights straight. I was worried sick about my bonsai trees. I had wrapped most of them in burlap and buried the pots in mulch, but I ran…
The Tree That Changed Everything for Me In 2015, I went to my first big bonsai show in Washington, DC. I had been doing bonsai for about three years, just working with trees from local garden stores. I thought I knew what good bonsai looked like. Then I saw a 60 year old Shimpaku Juniper…
The Tree That Survived My Worst Bonsai Mistake In 2016, I made a huge mistake. I took a Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta) from the Colorado Rockies at 9,000 feet, brought it home to Denver, and in July, right in the middle of the summer heat, planted it in a shallow bonsai pot. The timing could…
My First Encounter with Pinus sylvestris For a long time, I thought Japanese Black Pine was the only proper bonsai pine. I assumed people who were serious about bonsai would only grow Pinus thunbergii, maybe White Pine at most. Scots Pine did not seem like a bonsai tree to me, only a wild tree from…
