Bonsai Art

A common misconception with bonsai is that they need to be very small to be good.  This is completely untrue.  If you look at top bonsai artist’s trees you will see that their best ones are actually very big.  The problem is that growing a bonsai big while it’s in it’s pot is quite hard to do.  It takes a long long time to thicken up in the pot as it hasn’t got much room to expand.

The best way to increase the height and girth of the tree is to plant it in open ground.  There are a few problems with this however.

• The first being that the roots will get very excited and start expanding like crazy in every direction therefore making it harder to fit back in a pot.

• The second being that you cannot really enjoy your bonsai while it is in the ground as without a pot it doesn’t have the same character.

If you can get over the tree not being in a pot for a while it is a very good way to increase the size of the bonsai quickly.  I would suggest to leave it in the ground for a year, maybe two to grow before placing back into a pot.  Any more than this and the roots will expand too much and you will have to end up chopping a few of them off (a risky business).

It is also good to plant your newly collected trees in the ground for a year to allow them to recover from the move.