Bonsai Workshop

Himself and I traveled an hour and a half east to Lebanon, TN to attend a bonsai workshop. The workshop lesson was on how to pick out trees to work with from nursery stock. Excellent!

We were told to bring anything we were working on that we’d like to get some help with. For me… that was EVERYTHING! All five of them. One was the tree I’d worked on in March (the sticks – which by the way have leafed out nicely), three were nursery plants I had gotten at Lowes because I thought they had potential and the last was a Japanese maple that I had nearly killed in the move last year (trees do need watering occasionally!).

Now imagine my surprise when the lecturer used my table as his examples of what to look for! And my bigger surprise when he had only nice things to say about what I’d picked out!! That made me feel really good.

Next we went out into the nursery grounds and Owen showed what trees were good candidates and what were a bit too fussy to try to do bonsai on. He said “in general” nursery stock is a good choice because the plant is already used to being abused. He also said that the reject area of a nursery is a good place to look, as the plants go cheap and need some serious pruning anyway.

I found 2 plants in the reject area and 3 in the regular area that I want to work on.

So these 10 should keep me busy for this year!














My nursery stock prospects.















Working on a tree















Wiring the branches















Finished... for now...




















Making the tree look aged

Pruning for the perfect shape