WHAT IS BONSAI?

Bonsai is a miniature tree grown in a small pot, but expressing the beauty and having the volume of a tree grown in nature in miniature. The meaning of Bonsai is “tree on a tray”.
The difference between a bonsai and an ornamental tree usually is that ornamental trees are grown for contemplating their flowers or beautiful leaves, whereas bonsai are grown for the beauty of tree in its harmonious relation with the pot.

Bonsai may be only a few inches high but it has the nuance of a big tree grown on high mountains or a pine standing alone before the wind or hanging on rocky cliffs of a wild beach. There are many shapes of bonsai but there are never two bonsai trees that look exactly alike as other trees grown in the wild. Bonsai trees with a straight big trunk, leaning, two or three trunks, all are in nature. In other words, Bonsai is an attempt at perfecting the natural shapes of trees and having them in miniature.

Two new tendencies in Bonsai are making the impression and feeling of standing in front of a forest by growing some trees on a tray and growing trees on a strange-looking block of stone to create an impression of a miniature scene of a mountain area (it is not rockery).
Bonsai represents the harmony between man and nature. Formerly, Bonsai mostly had the nature of religion. It was used for worshiping; or at least carrying the nature of philosophy. Bonsai is the symbol of the everlasting, the spiritual road leading to perfection. Nowadays, if Bonsai looses the nature of religion, its aspect of philosophy still exists in spite of some changes due to the progress of civilization.

II. BONSAI ART
Bonsai is much too far away to be able to compare with other genres of classic arts such as painting, architecture, sculpture, and poetry…. In the meantime, Japanese books of Culture and Art have set ikebana (Art of arranging flowers), landscape garden, chanoyu (Tea ceremony) as art and bonsai as pastime (UNESCO 1958 – Japan: its land, people and culture, Page 1023 – 1024). Most of the books and documents about bonsai call it an art. We have that habit.

Bonsai mainly is an art of choosing a tree that potentially becomes a beautiful miniature tree. Then we grow it with our regular care, fully and lovingly, so that it can fit harmoniously with a pot to express the beauty of nature. Therefore, it needs light, water, fertilizer and soil suitable to grow strongly. At the same time, trimming and pruning, soil changing, pot changing, wiring and aging technique, all are necessary to shape trees as we expect.

The beauty of bonsai is simple enough, changing the way to take the main lines of a tree’s shape. The important thing is to suggest something more than to affirm it. The Japanese often compare bonsai with their “Hai-Kai” classic poetry that has only 17 syllables to express concisely, contentedly and hides an emotion or an abundant and strong spiritual mood.

However, trees in miniature is not the purpose of bonsai growing but the consolidated result of many attempts to grow a strong tree, shape it in the  right way and at the right time. Trees must be miniature but fed fully. It doesn’t mean that we ill-treat or not to feed it fully to make it short. How have famous bonsai works been able to live for hundreds of years if they are not strong and healthy?

Bonsai can grow from seeds, in nature or by grafting, layering, cuttings….but the result is a miniature and aging tree that has the characteristics of a tree grown in nature although it grows in an artificial environment.

How can a tree be dwarfed?  A unique technique is not enough to make a tree dwarf. The thing of a tree grown in a pot and the work of pruning, shaping and other caring methods, all participate in establishing the final result of making the tree grow limitedly but strongly. We may see many dwarf trees in nature. But as for growing bonsai, the environment supplied for them is “intentional “and depends on the basic botanical knowledge.

Main factors participating in limiting the growth of bonsai are soil and roots, pruning, sunlight, watering and wind.