What is the best bonsai tree


What is the best bonsai tree for beginners?

What is the best bonsai tree for beginners?

What is the best bonsai tree for beginners? People new to bonsai often ask us what is the best bonsai tree for beginners. The answer is – it depends! Success with bonsai depends chiefly on two things; location and watering. Having said that, some species of tree are certainly easier than others.

When you first start with bonsai, you tend to want to keep them in the house. After all, they are houseplants aren’t they?! Plus, if they are in the garden, you won’t see them as much as you would if they were on the coffee table / desk. Its cold and wet out there half the time, you don’t want to go out there. In reality, it is much easier to keep bonsai trees outside. Having said that, some bonsai trees can be kept indoors, and people tend to start with these.

What I can tell you is that almost everyone who grows bonsai trees as an interest, grows them outdoors. Trees love fresh air, sun and rain. I have this conversation with beginners in bonsai nearly every day at the nursery. So, if you want to get into growing bonsai and you have a garden, use it! Right now, you might not have any bonsai trees and the garden isn’t very interesting. If you get into bonsai and build a collection of lovely bonsai trees and bonsai projects, it will be coming into the house that’s the problem!

Anyway, off on a tangent there. Here is a list of a few of the easier bonsai tree species.

The best bonsai trees for beginners

Ficus

Description: Evergreen tropical tree. Sometimes have cool aerial roots growing from the trunk.

What Makes Ficus bonsai trees good for beginners?

Ficus will grow well indoors, in a bright location. Since beginners often want to grow bonsai trees indoors, Ficus is a good choice. It is also easy to shape with wire, as the branches are supple and bend easily. Fairly forgiving if you forget to water.

Shop for Ficus Bonsai

Chinese Elm

Semi-evergreen tree. Usually most peoples first bonsai tree and a good choice. Naturally small leaves. Not too expensive either – Nice looking trees are available without spending hundreds of pounds.

A well shaped Chinese Elm potted into a nice pot. A good starter bonsai without spending a fortune makes them a good choice for beginners in bonsai.

What Makes chinese elm bonsai trees good for beginners?

Will grow indoors or outdoors but its is better to grow them outdoors if possible, for at least the warmer months of the year. Very easy to prune, as they put out lots of new shoots when they cut branches back. Also frost hardy for outdoor life. Its quite easy to improve the look of the tree through regular pruning over time.

Shop for Chinese Elm Bonsai

Portulcaria – Small Leaf Jade

Evergreen succulent. Not actually a tree as such but it looks like one. Small oval leaves.

What Makes Portulacaria bonsai trees good for beginners?

Its naturally grows in hot climates, so its fine indoors. It is very tolerant of drying out, so if you forget to water for a few days, it won’t mind too much.

Juniper

Evergreen tree with scale like foliage. A bonsai classic. Old specimens from Japan can be extremely valuable. Need to live outdoors and cannot survive indoors.

What Makes Juniper bonsai trees good for beginners?

It doesn’t have leaves in the way that you imagine when first think of a leaf. Junipers grow in small cells – little green segments. This means that you don’t have to worry about big leaves spoiling the image of the tree.

A large tree in the wild can have a million leaves. We can’t do this with bonsai but junipers give the illusion of a wild tree due to the scale-like foliage, making them good for beginners in bonsai.

Shop for Juniper Bonsai

Cotoneaster

Evergreen. Small leaves and flower. Small berries too. Needs to live outdoors.

What Makes Cotoneaster bonsai trees good for beginners?

Small leaves always help. It also responds well to pruning – It puts out lots of new shoots when you prune branches back.

Small leaves, flowers and berries make Cotoneaster a good choice for beginners to bonsai.

Shop for Cotoneaster Bonsai

16 Common Bonsai Tree Species to Grow

These types of bonsai trees are best for training into different shapes at home

By

Cori Sears

Cori Sears

Cori Sears specializes in houseplants and houseplant care. For more than 10 years, she's been on a mission to transform her urban apartment into an indoor jungle. She's been a contributing writer for The Spruce since 2019.

Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process

Updated on 08/23/22

Reviewed by

Kathleen Miller

Reviewed by Kathleen Miller

Kathleen Miller is a highly-regarded Master Gardener and Horticulturist who shares her knowledge of sustainable living, organic gardening, farming, and landscape design. She founded Gaia's Farm and Gardens, a working sustainable permaculture farm, and writes for Gaia Grows, a local newspaper column. She has over 30 years of experience in gardening and sustainable farming.

Learn more about The Spruce's Review Board

The Spruce / Evgeniya Vlasova

Bonsai is an ancient living art form that utilizes growing and training techniques to produce miniature trees that mimic the appearance of their full-sized counterparts. These techniques include heavy crown pruning, root pruning, and root confinement in shallow containers.

Nearly any perennial, woody-stemmed tree or shrub that produces true branches can be trained as a bonsai tree. However, some species are more well-suited to growing as bonsai than others. Some bonsai tree species are more popular due to aesthetic reasons (such as having small foliage or gnarled-looking bark), while others are popular because they are notorious for being low-maintenance and resilient when grown as miniatures.

Bonsai Tree Species for Beginners

If you are just getting started growing and training bonsai, you may prefer to work with varieties that are easiest to train. Here are common bonsai tree species for beginners:

There are many types of species you can try out to create bonsai trees. Read on to find out more about the four species above for beginners and other popular flowering and non-flowering tree and shrub varieties that make good bonsai specimens.

Tip

Nearly any tree variety grown as a bonsai will grow best in a special potting mix that is usually marketed as a bonsai soil mix. This mix is really not a soil at all, but rather a mixture of hard Japanese akadama (a claylike mineral), pumice, and black lava, sometimes with some horticultural additives included.

Bonsai Tree Plants and Feng Shui

The Best Succulents

Indoor Bonsai Care Instructions

Indoor Bonsai Care Recommendations

It is a common misconception that bonsai are kept indoors. In fact, most types of bonsai trees need to stand outside to be exposed to natural phenomena throughout the four seasons, just like ordinary trees. Only tropical and subtropical plants can be permanently indoors, where a high and stable temperature is maintained throughout the year.

Choice of tropical tree species for indoor bonsai

There are several types of trees that can be grown indoors. Today, the most common (and easiest to care for) is ficus bonsai. Ficus, which tolerates low humidity and is resistant to various adverse conditions, is a good choice for beginners.

Other common indoor tree species are the money tree (Crassula), privet (Ligustrum), eretia (Carmona), sheflera (Schefflera arboricola) and sageretia (Sageretia).

Indoor bonsai trees; ficus, carmona and Chinese elm.

Why can't temperate (non-tropical) trees be kept indoors year-round?

As noted above, the most important reason is that these trees require a dormant period in winter. At this time, the annual growth cycle ends and the tree prepares for the next cycle, which will begin in early spring. It gradually sinks into a dormant state as temperature and light intensity decrease over several weeks. This does not happen if the tree is kept indoors.

An example of an "indoor" ficus bonsai

In terms of care, an "indoor" bonsai is different from ordinary "home" potted plants. The main difference is that bonsai are kept in small containers and therefore have a limited supply of nutrients and moisture. Even more importantly, tropical trees require an abundance of light and high humidity, i. conditions that are quite difficult to recreate indoors.

Specific recommendations for indoor bonsai care:

1. Lighting

The main problem with tropical bonsai indoors is the significantly lower light intensity indoors compared to outdoors. At low light intensity, trees, of course, do not die immediately, but their growth slows down, which ultimately leads to their weakening. Therefore, put your bonsai in the brightest place, best of all - on the south window.

However, even if you have a south-facing window, the light intensity may still be too low. Then additional lighting with lamps, for example, fluorescent (with a spectrum that stimulates plant growth) or LED, for at least 10 hours a day, can help.

2. Air Humidity

Another problem with keeping tropical bonsai indoors is that they need relatively high humidity, much higher than what is usually found indoors (especially when the heating or air conditioning is running). You can increase the humidity around your bonsai by placing it on a tray filled with water, or by misting it several times a day. It also helps to ensure the flow of air from the street through the window.

3. Watering and feeding

The most important rule is never water on a schedule. Ignore the tag attached to your bonsai, which may say that the tree needs to be watered every so many days. Instead, watch your tree and only water it when needed. Please see the section on watering and fertilizing for more information.

4. Temperature

Tropical tree species need a relatively warm temperature throughout the year, which is the normal room temperature of your living room.

Subtropical trees can tolerate slightly cooler temperatures in winter and usually do well when wintered at temperatures well below standard room temperature.

In a nutshell, choose the right kind of wood and follow the appropriate care instructions and you'll be fine!

varieties and types for beginners, growing conditions and technology, care rules

The right choice of bonsai for cultivation in our climate and the correct determination of its conditions is the key to plant health and its normal existence. With the help of the following article, we will help you choose the plant that is most suitable for planting.

Theoretically, it is possible to grow absolutely every plant in miniature, whether it is a shrub or a tree, but the art of bonsai has its own favorites, which I would like to pay attention to. Basically, these are deciduous and coniferous plants. So, the most popular are maple and pine. They are quite whimsical and grow extremely slowly, but it is worth trying to create the right conditions and follow the necessary care in order to grow these masterpieces.

The legislators of the art of bonsai, the Japanese, grow miniature ornamental plants in fresh air, that is, on the street, and bring them indoors only on holidays. In our regions, this possibility simply does not exist, since even on the balcony, in winter, the plant may die. Freezing of the roots occurs, which turns into an extensive disease of the whole plant, which leads to a slow death. However, plants that have been taken from the wild for bonsai cannot be permanently kept indoors. With the right content, they need winter dormancy, which is achieved at temperatures from 0 to -5 degrees Celsius. So, especially for bonsai, you will be forced to provide the necessary climate, for example, on a glazed balcony. Before you start growing bonsai, you need to identify exactly the plant that is more or less predisposed to our climate . Their adaptability is much higher and the percentage of survival is much higher than that of exotic plants.

Contents

Plants suitable for growing in our environment:

Choosing a plant for bonsai (video)

Houseplants for bonsai

It is much easier to grow bonsai from indoor plants, subtropical and tropical. They do not require any special conditions for wintering or growing up, and it is much easier to form bonsai from them and this can be done in a short time, of course, in a comparative sense. Even in ordinary wildlife stores, you can find ficuses that are suitable for forming small ornamental trees from them.

One of the main criteria when choosing material for bonsai will be the ability to find plants with small leaves and flowers, which are approximately commensurate with the small trunk of the plant itself. So the future plant, already from the very beginning, will be a proportionally reduced creation, similar to an adult tree.

Growing bonsai (video)

Also, in addition to external data and conditions of detention, when choosing plants for bonsai, people are often guided by the beneficial properties of plants . Some of them, in addition to producing a small amount of oxygen, have the ability to disinfect the surrounding air, while suppressing the vital activity of various harmful microorganisms or supplying it with volatile leaf secretions with medicinal properties. In the list of similar plants:

Professionals who have been practicing bonsai for many years say that in no case should you choose a plant for planting at home that you do not like, annoying in appearance, colors or smell.


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