Trying to buy bonsai plants in the UK can sometimes be a bit of a struggle. Where do you look? How much are you willing to spend? Here’s a few short tips you help you out on your bonsai buying quest!
Avoid indoor bonsai in garden centres. Half of these trees are actually supposed to be outside and by the time you get them home they have been indoors for too long already and are starting to die. Types you see such as maple, juniper and hornbeam should never be brought indoors
If theres a good bonsai centre close to home, use it. Sure these places are more expensive than garden centres but they are much better looked after and the shop keepers can tell you exactly how to care for them. They will have been treated right their whole life so should be in perfect health. You are paying for the amount of care they have received.
Join a club where you’ll find others wanting to trade. Lots of bonsai owners like to swop and change their trees now and again so who better to swop with than other like minded individuals? Take your trees along that you want to trade and you will definitely find a taker.
Search on ebay. Ebay is a great place to buy bonsai trees. You can search by region so that the only ones that will appear are close to home so you won’t have to travel far to collect them. Smaller trees can be posted if you want to risk it.
Use a mail order online shop. There are some good online shops out there selling shrubs. This is by far the cheapest way to create your own bonsai and give it your own stamp without spending the earth.
Bonsai Seeds are available from a number of different sources all over the world. What you must remember however is that they are actually normal tree seeds and that you can use any tree seeds for bonsai purposes. Some people prefer to grow bonsai from scratch like this to see it develop and mature and you can help it along every step of the way.
Other impatient people, like me; feel that you can’t wait around forever and just buy them ready grown! If you would like to grow your bonsai from seeds you can visit bonsai seedsto acquire some fabulous types to grow yourself in any style you see fit.
A car boot sale is a great place for bargains. Today I went to have a little look at a large one in Swansea for an hour or two. I ended up buying two bonsai books called “Pocket Bonsai” by David Prescott (and Colin Lewis as consultant editor!) and “The Essential Bonsai” by Ken Norman.
Both contain some great pictures and information. It’s always good to have a bit of extra knowledge to read up on or just to have to hand if you need it. They came for the huge price of 70p for the two! One has 9.99 on the cover so it’s a big saving.
It’s always good to check out the car boot sale for bargains on the weekend whatever sort of things you are looking for. One guy was even selling a motorbike…
For the non-UK visitors, a car boot sale is a place where lots of people wanting to sell things meet up every weekend. They all park their cars in the car park or field and set out their junk on tables. People come around and check it all out and if they like something they ask them how much it is. This starts at first light on a Saturday and Sunday morning (about 5:30am)
Explaining it here it sounds quite odd but to us British it’s a normal weekend!
I’ve acquired a few new trees in the last few weeks which are (hopefully) the last ones I will get before the growing season. I have to stop myself now that its spring, from buying or digging up any more..!
New berberis styled over deadwood (from a serissa that died on me!)
Blackthorn Yamadori – 20 years old. By the way this is not what I mean by stump, note that this tree has got taper already in it.
Cascade Chinese Juniper – Bought this beauty at the Birmingham Bonsai Boot Sale.
Quite a few people turned up to the bonsai boot sale in Birmingham this morning but I’m sure there would have been a lot more if it didn’t rain so much early on! I was in two minds about going myself listening to the rain through the night.
To be honest I didn’t sell very much at all, everyone seemed to be hunting down that ‘one perfect tree’ for the day. I had quite a few comments along the lines of ‘nice shape on that tree’ or ‘that’s a pretty one’. But frustratingly nobody would commit to buy one! I guess it’s only my first time there and didn’t know what to expect or what type of trees to bring.
I was expecting a lot of tourist types who had never bought a bonsai before so took a lot of small trees along.
I was NOT expecting a group of 10 enthusiasts huddling round the boot of my car as I arrived ready to snatch aged specimens for bargain prices.
Some trees there were very cheap and very nice also. The guy next to me who everybody knew (called Malcolm) pulled a fantastic larch out of his boot which I fancied, but it got sold within a few seconds! It was easily 60-70 years old or more and it sold for a measly 65 pound! Bargain. I snapped up another of his trees – a Chinese juniper for myself and in doing so, ended up spending more than I made the whole day…
All in all an interesting experience but one which would have been better had it not rained and I took more aged trees.
