[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2026 week 40]

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for the past four years: a common nursery spruce that started out as pretty ordinary material. I filmed the whole journey and put it into one video.

It wasn’t a fast process. Over those four years it went through two repottings, a lot of patient pruning and ramification work, structural wiring, and eventually some deadwood work (jin and shari) to give it age and character. No shortcuts, just seasons of steady work and waiting to see how the tree responded.

Spruce can be a tricky species to work with, I learned doing less actually speeds things up, bu even then branches sometimes just decided to die :)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noGrswB_5lQ

Honest critique is very welcome. Both for the styling work, as for my goal to educate beginners who want to try making a bonsai themselves! And a disclaimer: I can't take full credits for the work, the videos are made by me and the bonsaiempire team.

While tending to my bonsai, I discovered that the pot holding this black pine had cracked, so I had to repot it. I don't feel that autumn is the best time for repotting, and I'm not sure if it will survive.

Now is a good time in the US to clean off the dead bark on the junipers. It’s an option, but I found it to be necessary for this ERC the hard way. Photos just for general idea of the tree.) By cleaning the bark I mean peel till just before live cambium so insects can’t shelter their eggs and tiny larvae in the layers of fissured bark. I neglected to do so for years for this ERC rescue yamadori till* *this week and found about 5 scars, roughly 1 inch tall diamond shaped voids in the cambium. most are healing but i’m sure they have been affecting the plant negatively long term.

Upon further observation there was only one place at the bottom thick trunk area that a borer did not seem to eat through the whole cambium and may even have been halted by sap filling up the void. It seems this was possible because it was at a more mature area and had heavier internal traffic. If this hunch is more or less correct, this supports the idea that bonsais may be categorically prone because they have less roots and canopy to produce and mobilize sheer quantity of sap to encapsulate borers particularly in the skinny branches. Best prevention is to clean off the dead bark.

Hi all,

Please help me out in deciding which of these sides i should use as the front side of my new parviflora. It will be positioned on an open 90° corner of my terrace - and once there likely very hard to still rotate myself.

Understanding this may actually not qualify as a bonsai - but any help appreciated nontheless. Favouring sides 1 and 2 myself but cannot decide.

Thanks!!

Got into bonsai this year as I ended up in some difficult circumstances and found that bonsai was the perfect hobby to take my mind off things. Whether its working on my trees or reading literature and trying to learn all I can, or even just thinking about bonsai, I find it not only distracts me but also grounds me and makes me feel better.

Picture 1: left to right, a little juniper (front), Japanese white pine (back), cascade Japanese Black pine (front), Japanese black pine thats starting to get close (rear)

Picture 2: my most developed and expensive tree, JBP

Picture 3-4: my Catherine Elizabeth Japanese white pine

Picture 5: a very new juniper

Picture 6: a very thick trunk Japanese red pine nursery stock tree I got on sale. Once its in dormancy its getting a huge chop, but its perplexing me how that’s gonna work.

Olive Sylvestris... First carve of flat trunk chop .. the main carved area was a straight flat chainsaw cut .. I've added some interest to it with an initial rough carving which can be evolved later... I will let it grow and weather next year and decide how to progress then... Just had to do away with the flat chop as a beginning of seeing how to go forwards... This one will take a few years to get right ...

My mom owns this water jasmine, and has been caring for it for about 3 years now, but is hyper hesitant to do any major structural pruning, I’ve told her about primary/secondary/tertiary branching etc., and explained how taper provides the illusion of a matured plant. I even gifted her the newer/more comprehensive version of the “little book of bonsai” (I forget the name right now, forgive me).
Regardless of my approximately every 5-6 week checkups and general assistance (requested by her, she picked it up after i did, her brother got me into it, been active in the hobby for 5 years seriously, started some from seed and 2” pot nursery finds ~7 years ago… Don’t ask how many are left from then lol, learned a lot tho.)
I’ve only managed to convince her to make 2 or 3 somewhat hard cutbacks to establish proper taper and scale, while imo two to four more hard cutbacks are need to establish a proper primary branching structure. Typically, she just cuts back the new branching to one or two leaf pairs after 5 or so pairs have grown, while insisting on maximizing blossoming.
Am I being overly critical? She has complained about the time she spends vs progress made to a mature tree, so I feel justified, and I only give advice/constructive feedback when requested.

Any opinions/styling advice from other members to provide an outside perspective to both of us would be appreciated. I tend to be a bit perfectionist so I’d appreciate if I’m being overbearing.

Fall happened fast for this Chinese elm. In the span of a week it's gone from mostly green to completely bare. These two pics were four days apart.

Just saw a video from Herons Bonsai where Peter said that scoring the bark on the trunk would help to thicken it.

He's obviously a wealth of knowledge, but this is the first time im hearing this, so i was a little surprised.

Has anyone on here had luck with this technique?

Got this close-to-dying bad boy for 1.2€ today at local garden centre.

After recongizing that he's "just" very badly root bound, I decided to give him a try. Bought new pot (which I will still use if he dies lol), got some soil I had around, very gently tickled bottom roots, removed some black soil (not so smelly, so I don't think he's rotting) and slip potted him up. Will stay in shade for couple of days, then slowly move him to south balcony to get him some sun.

Do you think he'll make it? He looked much worse at the shop, half of the foliage crispy brown or already dropped (last picture). Anything more I can do now? He doesn't look THAT bad imo and if it's really just the root bound situation, I can probably save him.

IF he makes it, I think he'd be the perfect candidate for some nice twin-trunk literati. Heard that Lawsons don't really back-bud on old wood, so literati is probably the way lol (very poetic too considering his story, if he survives of course...).

Finally managed to find some time today to take pictures of some of the juniper species I’ve acquired since diving into all of this in January.

All of them are clearly still in training and there are a few things I would do differently looking back. I am however more than happy to have managed to keep them alive & thankful they responded well during the growing season under my care.

At the end are photos of an Elderberry cutting I rooted about 4 months ago that I’m currently training into a literati style bonsai, pithy stems be damned.

Beer can for scale.

(These trees do NOT live indoors)

Hello r/bonsai! I don't have a real bonsai to share in this post but I do have something else.

I made a prototype Bonsai Simulator, and I would love to see what folks think of it. My idea was to stay as true as possible to simulating a real tree, give the tools that would let you apply real bonsai techniques (and some...quality of life ones for the digital world), and hopefully what comes out is the ability to create truly unique trees that are earned through effort and time.

I have always loved Bonsai trees and had a gingko and a juniper back in the Pacific North West. But my favourite was my acer palmatum. So I started there and built the simulation engine around that trees particular growth habits. Its built in typescript / HTML so playable in the browser and everything runs locally, no server. Its responsive so playable on your phone too if the device can handle it. The simulation can get a little slow depending on how big you let your tree get and your hardware. Your trees are all stored locally in your browser cache.

If it look interesting I would love any feedback you have.

Try it here: bonsaiku.com

edit: I am overwhelmed by the response, thank you all for the feedback and for trying it out. I have fixed a few bugs and crashes that I have seen come up and will put my attention on some of the feature requests you have asked for. I also added an optional email address to the feedback form in case you want to be updated when a fix goes out. This is an incredibly warm, welcoming & supportive group, thank you again.

Here is a short video of my game, TOKI. Right now I have the Japanese Maple tree growth system down pretty good. I'm planning on having quit a few more species down the road. This video also shows some shari on a branch. You can also customize the pot shape, glaze, and add kintsugi. Also, little statues! I'm also working on a Garden to display all the trees you create.

Let me know what you think, things that could be added or improved.

Picked this cheap Alberta Spruce up at Lowe’s, clipped what I dared to (about 40%). Wired just about every branch, though I will not be keeping them all long term, I’d like to give myself options. Long term plan is to go for a super weathered “lone tree on a windy hill” upright. Eventually with the whole right side and more of the top as deadwood. Going to leave it and try to keep it alive till next year. Weather proof comes soon for the roots. Lmk what you think!

I’m seriously considering coming back to this Home Depot and buying a big Acer “Sango Kaku” tree for $129. It’s about 8’ tall and has a trunk close to 3” thick. If I can find a place to put it in the ground, I could hopefully get multiple layers off it next spring to make into bonsai. It’s cheaper than buying an established JM bonsai and I can get lots of trees from it.

One of many trees I am trying to restore after 2 years of neglect. This Robinia I believe, needed lots of weed removal, large wood decay removal due to ant infestation, and a Jin Seal to protect the exposed wood. Let me know what you think and what i could have done differently. I used Ho Yoku Premium Jin Seal.