This is going to get complicated but bear with me… In the past as child growing up in Brazil I was interested in poisonous animals (spiders, scorpions and snakes). I learnt everything I could about them, was collecting them and was friends with the people responsible for the Butantan Institute that creates antiserum, where I used to go every day after school. That was when I was around 12 or 13. Move forward to when I am 30 and already a postdoc in Cambridge (the real one in the UK). The first time Bonsai caught my eye was then. On a Saturday morning while roaming a discount bookstore, I picked up a book about unusual plants (here the connection to unusual animals). At the same time I picked up a book on Bonsai - sort of unusual trees. I like unusual. The book was the 101 Essential tips by Harry Tomlinson. I read that book and found it really cool and thought to myself that once I settle down I would get into it. I found it cool that a bonsai carries its roots wherever it goes but knew that immigration/border agents think otherwise. That freedom from the soil stroke a cord on me both as an academic and as a someone with a jewish background. As an academic, you don’t know when or where you’ll settle down and as a jew the overwhelming folklore is that of a wondering people throughout history exiled over the millennia from Israel throughout the world and from place to place ever since. My cultural background and professional life both are such that you carry your roots with you and you know you’ll move. Three years ago on the first week in January I came across a post in facebook showing a levitating bonsai. That night I picked up my book and read it again. I then started reading all I could and started my collection with a Japanese maple and an olive that I still have. Some 20 trees later and a few casualties also and the rest is history. In the meantime I moved again. Now we’re in Montreal, we bought this house in no lesser part because of the big garden. Who knows if I’ll move again or not - but if I do, I will carry my roots and my trees. As a side note, I saw karate kid back in the day but didn’t care much for the bonsai in it - a much stronger cinematographic connection to bonsai for me is Jean Reno as Léon with his houseplant in The Professional.
I don’t have any grandchildren as of yet. However, I no longer have to consider children as an element in my backyard. I think my yard is going to be one of those places where children will not be allowed to get too rowdy. That is, until my wife gets it in her head that we have to have a place for the grandkids to play. Hmmm… I need to take over as much of the yard as I can before they get here.
I’m sorry you didn’t get to learn bonsai from your grandfather. I brought my children with me to bonsai workshops when they were little, but it didn’t take root. Maybe I’ll fare better with the grandchildren.
Until then, I have strict orders with respect to my trees. Before I reach room temperature, I want members of the local club to come and take possession of every bonsai and bonsai in training. I’ve seen too many trees go to children and grandchildren who “always wanted to try bonsai” but have no idea how to keep the damned things alive.
Fully agree. I did want to adopt a tree or two but my mom sat me down to tell me how much work it would be. I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment as a pre-teen (especially with no training or educational resources). Most went to his brothers and friends that practiced.
The widow of a friend said it broke her heart to see her husband’s trees dying under the “care” of her son and grandson.
When I saw The Karate Kid III for the first time, I saw something special for sure. I knew I would want to be involved with bonsai.
Bonsai has given me a passion. They are one of the most beautiful things.
Hooked for life.
Thank you so much Ryan and everybody at Mirai! You’ve really upped my bonsai game.
Hello Folks,
I had just realized that my post was just about how I got started in practicing Bonsai and how Mirai contributes to my knowledge in the practice. So…
Bonsai has raised my optimism and practicality to a whole new level. It is not just a hobby anymore, it is an extension of my thoughts, feelings and spirituality.
Because of Bonsai, I see the reciprocity of the opposites in irony with a more open mind, looking from the creative and/or feasible angle.
Bonsai helped me become a better planner, have better foresight.
For these, I am thankful that I got into Bonsai, that I watched Karate Kid, and I tumbled across Ryan Neil in YouTube.
Hi al!!
I´m a beginner on this blog although I´ve been following Bonsai Mirai since it started. I love not just the trees, and quality on the Content from the Mirai Team but also the good taste on the design of the Webpage and the great photography.
I have a my blog related to Bonsai and Photography and I wrote an article on how I began in the Bonsai World. It is called “Oak, Eiche, Roble – My story with small trees in pots”. You can read it by click on the following link:
Cheers
René
I lost my job of 20 years due to new management and their new “vision”. The next couple of weeks I became close friends with the dark and several bottles of vodka. My incredible wife , who was terminated from the same company at the same time, grabbed me by the arm and said “we’re getting out of this house today!”. She took me to the local conservatory which had a small bonsai display. After a year or two and hundreds of dollars of cheap nursery stock mercilessly butchered, I finally found what true bonsai are. Living art. I’ve done a lot of research… trying to learn the art frm every aspect… I currently have 12 trees… 2 in bonsai pots. Not show worthy by any means… but look good on my patio. Looking forward to more…
I know when I first noticed bonsai, that the interest was surprisingly intense, and it seems from all your comments above that this is actually very common.
It got me thinking about why our reaction would be this way to miniature trees, it was definitely beyond what you would expect to a simple ornament or decoration. Something more primal. So i’ve been thinking a bit about the psychological significance of bonsai / trees, and found this article:
Not specifically bonsai, but a very interesting, especially understanding the sudden bug which seems to bite. It briefly touches on potential evolutionary background for our affinity with trees, which i’ve been thinking about recently too.
What do you think?
(yes, its a paper…i’m a scientist, even when it’s not my field).
Wow. Now that’s a Question, ok I’m 53 years old. I started out in Bonsai when I first saw the Karate Kid movie way back when I was 21. That was it, I now deem it “the call of the tree. It has called me many times. I am from the U.K. No one special but Bonsai has taken me on a long journey, I joined Kent Bonsai Club in the U.K. and after a few years ended up on the committee for a year or so. I was never one for committees etc so that ended and I enjoyed my Bonsai from the other side of the fence. My long term friend Nick Pearce opened a Bonsai Nursery and we travelled far and wide over many years. I have done workshops with Kevin Wilson, David Benavente, Marco Invernessi etc. All of the trees I worked on and developed have now gone to new owners. It took me until much later on I life to settle my wanderlust. Of note I travelled to Luxembourg way back when, I took the photos of Kimura demonstrating on a huge Juniper collected from the alps and the pictures were published in the U.K. Bonsai magazine I’m not totally sure of the year but around 1998. Bonsai has always been in my blood and the call of the tree took me to Noleanders show and the Ginko show a couple of times many years ago. I was really lucky to travel to Japan on a group Bonsai tour and I got to meet Peter Warren and master Kunio Kobayashi, he hand painted his signature into his book for me. I could tell you of the story of a long evening drinking with Peter but I’ll save that for another day. On this trip I met my now long term friend Dave Kiernan from Australia and he invited me to visit. So Bonsai again took me too another land. I visited his club, the Newcastle bonsa Society and was encouraged to give a talk about Bonsai in the U.K. Very Daunting as I was also know for liking to do a card trick or too. Un known to me was that this was all recorded and is now in the clubs archive. I think I was only thirty ish years old. Once again!aster Kimura factored in my travels and he demonstrated at the Sydney exhibition at the Olympic Park. I remeber it well and the lack of material of a standard warranted by such a master. As life moved on my collection of trees dissapeared to new owners and I traveled and became a Scuba Instructor teaching in Panamá, the U.K. etc. I even visited a Bonsai exhibition in Panamá. So to the current day I am now living in Spain and settled, I currently own three trees, a wonderful Sabina in the making a Bunjing Sabina in the making and a lovely Keyshu Juniper. I can’t wait to get my hands on some of the wonderful old olives we have here. I’m so lucky to have a Bonsai Nursery 20 mins from me and I get to spend lots oftime working with it’s owner Nacho Solar.
I suppose my story is that of one that Bonsai showed me the way to patience it taught me so much about horticulture. I’m not a great Bonsai designer but I pride myself on being able to look after a tree to the highest degree. I couldn’t ever imagine Bonsai not touching my life in some way everyday.
Congratulations to Mirai and the Mirai Live team I’m so happy to have found it. I wish it had been around way back when I started on this long path.
We took a family trip to California and had an opportunity to visit Muir Woods a few years ago. I’ve always had a fascination with trees but never took the time to pursue. Shortly after that trip my wife bought me a juniper. We live in an apartment so the juniper was dead within two months. Not enough light and too much water. Like most I began to study my mistakes starting with what trees belong indoors but came across such a wealth of information and conflicting opinion that it was confusing. After watching several You Tube videos and reading Harry Tomlinson books, Spring Fundamentals from Mirai, showed up in my You Tube feed. I learned more about trees in that video than I had in over two years of watching videos/reading books. My collection is small but I have managed to keep all my trees alive and in good health due to patience, knowing what to look for and guidance from sites like Mirai. I live in Brooklyn so any chance for a green space is great given there is so much concrete everywhere. It helps keep me calm in an area that is constantly in a hurry. As a newbie the amount of information can be intimidating but I think that gets easier with time. A few months back I had the opportunity to see a Mirai tree at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and after watching so many videos explaining technique it was awesome to see up close. I’m going to the national show and while I totally expect to be overwhelmed with information I look forward to it as a learning opportunity. One of the owners of my company, a mentor, has been into bonsai for years and told me if you’re going to go to one show, go to the national show. I’d like to thank the Mirai team for all they do and for the manner in which they teach. Ideas and techniques are demonstrated and suggested, not dictated, and the focus always seems to be driven towards the health of the tree. I feel the goal is always to make us better at this art form.
I struggled with addiction (and still do) and bonsai is the main thing that has helped me learn to cope with life now that I’m trying to face it sober. I love how grounding it is to reality that things take time, fine detailed care, and can be done in many different ways. This has been my way of resetting when my emotions and the difficulties of life become too much.
A friend got me interested in bonsai about 3 years ago after watching a local broadcast of a man who showed how to create a bonsai from nursery stock in 10 minutes. Turns out he is the owner of a bonsai nursery, with decades of experience, and he did the broadcast more as a demo to interest people in bonsai in general. My friend dragged me to see his nursery. I spent time in his beautiful, peaceful bonsai garden, surrounded by specimen bonsai hundreds of years old. I was taken both by the living art and the tranquility I felt in their presence. Of course I was hooked. My friend bought a small juniper, which she keeps on a windowsill above her kitchen sink. It’s still alive, though definitely not thriving. I also started buying trees and kept buying and buying, LOL. I’ve lost a number of the small trees I started with, which taught me that keeping my trees healthy and thriving is essential. The techniques I’m learning, with much help from Ryan and Mirai (shout out to you all), are helping me to develop as a bonsai enthusiast. Most of my trees are still “trees in pots”–either nursury pots or training pots. I’m in no hurry to develop them, opting to go slowly and enjoy their presence. I too suffer from depression and anxiety, and just being surrounded by beautiful trees has been healing. I think one of the reasons I do go so slowly in developing my trees is because I have so much anxiety around harming them with my styling and wiring (I’m still bad at wiring, even after Ryan’s excellent streams on the topic). From Mirai, and from all of you who contribute to the forum, I’ve learned so much: how to use the tree’s natural growth cycle to get the best results from any operation; how to let the tree guide me when making styling decisions; and how to take risks. That last has been eye-opening for someone as anxious as I am. It’s scary for me to remove branches, create deadwood, change the planting angle, prune roots, etc., but I’ve learned it’s necessary in order to create the best possible balance between the nature of the tree and my vision of it. I now have a more peaceful life, more patience, and more of an appreciation of nature, plus a creative outlet, than I ever had before. Thanks to you all.
you got a picture of your maple and olive? i’m slowly (‘quickly,’ in Bonsai-speak) killing off all of my ‘first’ trees; hopefully 1 or 2 survive
Is this a question about using DE as substrate? I can get you some pics today. Here are some Japanese maples lifted off my garden (around 35 years in the ground), they were removed with very minimal roots and planted on 100% DE with some coconut bark mixed in. Let me know if I can help. Hope you can save your trees…
no I was referring to the amazing fact that some of your original first bonsai are still alive after 20y
no that’s not me…However you’re right that some of my original bonsai are still alive but it is only a few years, the interest is older though. This olive and maple are my first two. Still alive, still largely unstilled. Many other trees in between didn’t have such luck though…
Are these maples u were digging out this year?? They look so well and healthy @rafi !!!
Amazing work! What are the steps for next few years? I mean how long do you want to keep them in this mix and plastic containers and do you want to start with styling first?? Feel free to respond to this in the topic ab them you created as it is pretty out of this topic. Im just so curious - absolutely loving this ‘maple journey’ 
I will wire/guy wire down the main branches this fall, continue to develop their girt next year while at the same time developing branching at their base, maybe refine a bit the stumps from the cuts from this spring after leaf fall. Will probably keep them in these containers for at least 2 more years… The most impressive of them all, called “the president” is twice the diameter (not in the pictures) and that one I am keeping, the others I might sell…