Growing Bonsai Indoors

Tailored to the needs of first-time bonsai growers, this hands-on guide explains step-by-step how to make indoor bonsai flourish. You'll find a thorough overview of the most common bonsai styles - fully illustrated with color photos and line drawings - along with advice on wiring and pruning from renowned experts. This handy guide also serves as a helpful reference for buying bonsai and connecting with other enthusiasts locally and around the world.--COVER.

Creating beautiful, healthy bonsai is a wonderful skill that anyone can learn, with a little time, patience, and this all-inclusive manual. With color photos and drawings to illustrate the points, it introduces all the cultivation techniques; offers expert advice on location, soil types, watering, and pest control; and provides intricate instruction on training the bonsai--including pruning, wiring and stretching it. An A-to-Z guide of all the popular species showcases varieties that range from a flowering Camellia Japonica, with its beautiful smooth stem, to an easy-to-care for Olive tree. Each entry gives some background on the plant, and includes suggestions for acquiring the bonsai and directions on how to position it in the room for best results.

"Excellent guide...with specifics on individual plants." - The New York Times. A bonsai is a miniature tree. Grown in a shallow dish, it resembles larger trees in all respects except size, and lives to an equally old age. The conventional bonsai requires a site in the open air where the plant is exposed to the sun, wind and rain in order to develop and remain healthy. In this book, however, Paul Lesniewicz looks at those species that can successfully be kept indoors all year round. He explores a vast variety of bonsai trees, including mini versions, which are only 3-6 inches tall, for those who are really lacking in space. Indoor Bonsai includes sections such as choosing a plant or growing it from seed, planting, general care, pests and diseases, shaping, wiring and pruning, and many other aspects, all explained in simple and straightforward terms. Advice is accompanied by step-by-step illustrations and spectacular colour photography throughout, to help you choose and care for your bonsai tree. Paul's guidance is not a one-size-fits-all approach; his sensible and easy-to-follow advice will help each gardener to create their own individual work of art.

Learn how to maintain your Ficus Bonsai tree with the "Ficus Bonsai Guide". Ficus plants are incredibly popular Bonsai trees, sold at many stores and online shops. They are strong trees, do well indoors, and are very suitable for beginners at the art of Bonsai. But how do you keep your tree alive? And how can you maintain its shape? The "Ficus Bonsai Guide" explains the care guidelines, cultivation and design principles for the Ficus. It includes over a hundred photos and explains techniques including watering, fertilizing, repotting, pruning and wiring in easy to use step-by-step guides. - over 100 stunning images - explains Ficus care, styling and propagation - with step-by-step explanations - all techniques explained specifically for the Ficus Bonsai Empire is the world's most visited Bonsai website and has provided beginners with quality information for over a decade. We have developed this Ficus guide to help you get a taste of this fascinating and living art, and make sure you know how to care for your Ficus Bonsai!

This step-by-step bonsai book shows you how to craft super mini bonsai—the smallest form of bonsai! Miniature Bonsai reveals the Japanese art of super-mini bonsai gardening. As rewarding as full-scale bonsai cultivation is, mini bonsai is affordable, straightforward to learn and kind to your busy schedule. It's a complete gardening experience—a plant raised from seed or cutting, carefully potted, grown and maintained over time—a world of green in a pot no bigger than a demitasse or a thimble. From mixing the right growing medium to choosing the perfect pot to displaying your mini bonsai, this Japanese gardening book gives you basic techniques and valuable tips to help you grow miniature: flowering trees pines maples oaks junipers and other varieties of tiny trees and potted plants that are readily available and last for years With Miniature Bonsai you'll learn how to: Select plants that thrive as mini bonsai Work with seeds and small cuttings Match the right plant to the right pot Buy and prepare the growing medium Maintain and drain your miniature bonsai Display and enjoy your prized bonsai plants And much more! A pleasant pastime, a perfect gift, a beautiful addition to spaces small and large—Miniature Bonsai will show you how to make it happen.

Bonsai—the Japanese art of training plants to form elegant sculptures—is an age-old craft that appeals to gardeners and non-gardeners alike. Bountiful Bonsai presents a radical, new approach that applies bonsai techniques to everyday container gardening, instantly turning houseplants and herbs into beautiful and unusual bonsai sculptures! Bonsai expert Richard Bender not only expects his plants to look good but also expects to yield pleasant fragrances, fresh herbs and fruits for his table. He shows readers how to create "instant bonsai" by shaping a range of common house plants, including: Fragrant hibiscus and jasmine Kitchen herbs such as rosemary and thyme Luscious fruits like cherries and oranges Medicinals such as tea tree and camphor laurel This beautifully illustrated volume provides all the information you need to get started, from plant choice advice to care requirements and bonsai "carving" tips. Suitable for indoor gardening, or shaping exquisite bonsai fruit trees for outside gardens, Bender turns a finicky art into a hobby accessible to all. Bonsai have graced Japanese homes for centuries; now they can yield useful crops that will simultaneously satisfy your artistic sensibility and also provide some wonderful meals!

Jerry Meislik is a well-known bonsai lecturer, demonstrator, teacher and writer. He has written articles for many of the major bonsai publications including Bonsai Journal of the American Bonsai Society and Bonsai Clubs International magazine. Jerry maintains a very active bonsai web site at www.bonsaihunk.us. There are more than 70 articles written by Jerry in various online forums and groups. The author is an acknowledged expert on the genus Ficus as it is applied to the growing of bonsai. He previous book on Figs, Ficus: The Exotic Bonsai was printed in both hard and soft cover editions. This prior book was used as the start and backbone of this new book The World of Ficus Bonsai. This new book is written for the everyday bonsai grower who wishes help in growing, styling and making the best fig bonsai possible from a tree or two and also contains information about figs suitable for the advanced bonsai grower and artist. The book is highly enhanced from the first book as it now contains over 40 Ficus species references that will greatly help the bonsai enthusiast to identify and to grow these specimens. Also included are photos of many Ficus species to aid in identifying the often confusing world of Ficus. There is also a list of Ficus that likely will prove difficult to grow as bonsai. Jerry has held many offices in the bonsai world. He has been president and vice-president of the Big Sky Bonsai Society; chairman of the publications committee of the American Bonsai Society; a member of the board of the National Bonsai Foundation; and is an honorary member of the Ann Arbor Bonsai Society of Michigan. Jerry has had two of his masterpiece bonsai accepted into the Matthaei Botanical Gardens Bonsai collection of the University of Michigan and into the Denver Botanic Garden Bonsai collection. He has traveled abroad to Canada, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Canada, Chile, Myanmar, Argentina and other countries to give demonstrations as well as to study their bonsai culture and of course to view and to learn from their bonsai trees.

Begin your lifelong love affair with the mindful art of bonsai. Do you know your shari from your nebari? Can you tell literati styling from informal upright? Want to know how to create that gnarled and twisted look? Let Happy Bonsai guide you along the path to enlightenment, with care and display profiles for 40 top trees and fully illustrated step-by-steps of more than 20 bonsai techniques and styles. Find your perfect tree and discover how to prune, shape, and tend to its needs to create a beautiful living sculpture. Fall in love with this most meditative of garden crafts.