A premise in bonsai is that the best bonsai look like old trees. In my opinion a lot of ‘best’ bonsai look more like fantasy trees from a Studio Ghibli film, and not at all like real trees. I live near Richmond Park in London which has 1300 veteran trees, of which 320 are considered […] Read more… >
In bonsai a small leaf is preferred, because this give the impression of the proper scale of the tree. But how small do leaves need to be? Let’s take the beech tree out the back of my house. It’s about 25m tall, with a 75cm diameter trunk, and its leaves are 8-10cm long. If you […] Read more… >
It’s a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question because the trunk on a bonsai doesn’t exist in isolation, it exists relative to the foliage, nebari and pot. Because trees undergo secondary thickening however, their trunks expand with every year. So, older trees have thicker trunks. For another post I found this data below. It shows mass rather than volume, […] Read more… >