How to Choose a Tree for Bonsai

Are you wondering what tree to select to start your bonsai and where to find it? The answer is almost any tree and anywhere. Everything from the local woods to mail order from halfway around the world is available to the gardener of today.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Gardening Tools
• Perennial Plants
• Pots And Planters
• Potting Soil
• Transplant Shovels
• Trees

Finding Potential Bonsai

1. Look over your own local area for subjects to work with. The possible plantings you'll find will be climate-appropriate, and some nice displays can be set up showing off the local stock. Make sure you have the proper permission before you dig any trees not on your own property. Laws protect government lands as well as private property.

2. Scour your local garden centers and nurseries. There are great potential bonsai hidden in the masses of plant life at these places.

3. Use landscaping companies as a possible resource. Make contact with one or more of the companies in your area. When they go to take out shrubs or trees from a job site and replace them with others, you may be able to pick up some of the removed stock for a small fee or even at no cost. These trees could have years of growth, but be carefully pruned already in a partial state of bonsai.

4. Give the Internet the attention it deserves. The possibilities are almost endless. With the proper keywords and a credit card, you can have trees of nearly any type delivered in a matter of days.

Popular Bonsai Trees

1. Look into some of these trees as possible material for your collection, but don't limit yourself. Try anything that catches your eye.

2. Check out fir trees for good display pieces ' the cork fir, Korean fir, alpine fir and silver fir, for example.

3. Consider maple trees for their beautiful leaf patterns and colors to show off - such as the Japanese red maple, laceleaf, fullmoon and lobed evergreen.

4. Choose from among the multitude of junipers, which make perfect stock for bonsai.

5. Select from the popular pine trees - black pine, Mugho, Scotch, Western white pine and pinion.

6. Use any of the oaks. Some of the oldest, most beautiful bonsai on record are from the oak family.

7. Think about the fruit trees. Almost every kind of fruit tree is usable and very popular. Its flowers are beautiful, and the naturally rough bark on most of these trees gives it an aged look well beyond its years. Sometimes a single piece of fruit is allowed to mature to accent that it is, in fact, a 'real' fruit tree. Great care must be taken to brace up the growing fruit so that its weight doesn't damage the relatively delicate branches.

8. Turn to flowering vines and shrubs for nice displays. The list of possibilities is endless and includes yews, wisteria, holly and trumpet vines. Honeysuckles have woody trunks that show an aged look while offering stunning flowers and fragrance.

9. Remember that this list is only a tiny sample of some of the better-suited and most popular. There are literally thousands to choose from and one single type of tree can be pruned and shaped into several different styles of bonsai offering dramatically different looks.