Happy Bonsai: Choose It, Shape It, Love It

Description

Happy Bonsai shows how anyone can become a bonsai artist with care and pruning profiles for 40 top trees and more than 20 fully illustrated techniques and bonsai styles. Select the right tree, learn how to keep it thriving, and shape it into a beautiful living sculpture. Do you know your shari from your nebari? Can you tell a raft display from a semi-cascade? Do bonsai grow better indoors or out? When is the best time to prune? Happy Bonsai has all the answers. Specialist techniques - such as repotting, wire-training branches, defoliating, and root and branch pruning - are explained with illustrations for each stage of the process, and there are demonstrations of how to achieve the main types of bonsai styles, from an informal upright specimen to a forest group or root-over-rock display. Busting myths and making bonsai accessible to everyone, Happy Bonsai will help you fall in love with this meditative garden craft. Contents THE BASICS Bonsai today How your tree grows Obtaining a bonsai tree Where to grow Choosing a pot Design principles Classical styles Modern styles Essential toolkit Potting up General care Pruning to shape Wiring to shape Starting off a young tree Make a cascade Make a rock planting Make a root-over-rock Creating jin and shari Maintenance pruning Pests and diseases TREE PROFILES Tokonoma display Three point display Shohin display Outdoor display Index Acknowledgements