Indoor Bonsai Tree Care

Miniature gardens are becoming increasingly popular. Bonsai Landscapes reworks the enduring appeal of the bonsai to create whole mini-landscapes. The author, Peter Adams, has 40 years experience in bonsai design and growing and has created some of the bonsai held in the British National Collection.

The book is designed to take the enthusiast through the process of creating these landscapes. Adams begins by looking at the different examples of miniature landscapes, using plants including Japanese and trident maples, “Seiju” elm, and American larch. He includes some interesting examples from both well-known growers and amateurs, using plants from a variety of nurseries worldwide. All of the landscapes featured have been planted for a number of years. Adams gives the height and age of the plants as well as details of the container used so that you can recreate a similar effect.

The book begins with the basics, listing the tools and materials you will need to create your bonsai landscape. Adams considers the differences among accent plants that define the landscape, accessory plants that create surface texture, and rocks that are brought in to suggest cliffs and ravines. Soil type, container, and tools and sundries are all listed for a successfully completed project.

Adams goes on to offer advice on choosing and shaping plants and includes a glossary of the most commonly available bonsai plants and how they will work within a miniature landscape. The back of the book has a tree-care directory. Adams’s methodical analysis of 13 projects, with accompanying line drawings and photographs, makes it easy for anyone to achieve this novel effect. –Karen Homer

Bonsai, the art of growing a potted plant in miniature, is becoming increasingly popular. Adams, a leading bonsai expert, gives detailed instructions on creating 13 individual landscapes, including a 7-trunk Chinese juniper resting on a Japanese stone, a 9-tree grouping of elms, an 11-tree landscape-box evergreen, and a 5-trunk grouping of western hemlocks on a volcanic stone. Instructions list the components needed for each project, suggest methods of assembling the groupings, and give specific feeding and watering requirements. There are also chapters supplying general information on tools and materials, choosing and shaping plants, creating landscapes, and making a rock planter. Any reader with perserverance will be greatly rewarded with the results. Photographs by Bill Jordan, along with helpful drawings, are included George Cohen

Whether it’s the cool serenity of a cave, the warm colors of the desert, or the lushness of a forest, saikei–the art of the living landscape–captures in small scale the splendor of nature. This classic form of bonsai contains miniature trees, rocks, soil, water, and related vegetation to form replicas of gardens, deserts, and countryside. Since saikei usually features young plant material, it is the least expensive bonsai art, perfect for beginners since you can complete a project in only a matter of hours. Understand the concept of depth in a landscape and the five elements of style (harmony, consistency, balance, scale, and interest), potting and pruning, and which tools and containers work best. Hundreds of photographs showcase masterful examples and lead you through the various stages of a unicorn garden, ancient gorge, and more. Published in hardcover as Miniature Living Bonsai Landscapes. The author lives in Eugene, OR. 192 pages (all in color), 8 1/2 x 11.

A variety of themed bonsai displays are shown in this project source. Miniature gardens are not only a delight to look at but will also prove themselves a harmonizing and soothing force within the home.

After a successful career as a textile designer, SU CHIN EE became fascinated by the little-practiced art of penjing. A gold-medal winner at the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, she is now an official judge in the bonsai category at that show. Su grows and sells bonsai landscapes from her nursery in Kent, England. She writes regularly about bonsai and penjing for magazines and journals.
–This text refers to an alternate

Paperback
edition.