"Bonsai art is the display of a landscape - without the landscape."
--Nobu Kajiwara
This quote couldn’t be truer. Growing and sculpting bonsai trees can be quite a satisfying hobby. It is a hobby; however, that requires a tremendous amount of patience. When you take a simple sapling and mold it to your desire, you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful piece of art you can truly be proud of!
The term bonsai literally means plant in a pot or tray planting. Bonsai however is much more than simply a plant in a pot. The goal of bonsai is to create the appearance of great size and age. This is accomplished by creating a bonsai with strong roots that extend in all directions, creating a sense of stability, a large trunk which tapers as it goes upward, a clear apex, and well formed and
well placed branches. These features all combine to create a careful blend of symmetry, balance and proportion. It also must be displayed in a pot which harmonizes well with the plant material.
Bonsai is the art of growing trees in a confined space to simulate certain environmental conditions such as great age, extreme weathering, twisted or contorted form, landscape, or other factors.
Bonsai trees are modeled on and take inspiration from nature. The idea of bonsai is to recreate some of nature's most stunning and beautiful effects on trees which are reduced in scale.
In this book, we will introduce you to bonsai techniques and how to grow your own bonsai masterpieces. The beauty of bonsai is that there is no definitive “right way” to do it. But we can offer up tips and tricks to craft your own bonsai. Enter into the world of bonsai and gain a new insight into life!
