How did it start for you?

[ajm55555]

Probably a similar thread was already started here in the past but I can't find anything. If you know it, please point me there.
I think it would be inspiring to know your earliest recollection of how this bonsai nut thing started for you all...

That's how it started for me (forking from Conor's anniversary thread. Thanks Conor for giving me the idea!).

When I was a kid, I remember a huge stone pine (Pinus Pinea) at my grandma's country house in Italy, that would drop a lot of nuts (yummy) and some of them would grow on the ground. I never heard the word bonsai at that time but I was fascinated at the idea of growing one in a pot and I did try it. They would always die so I got convinced it was impossible to grow a tree in a pot. Then one day I heard about bonsai and finally knew it was indeed possible.
PS the reason they would die was, of course, because I would not take proper care of them ;-)

This is the tree today... probably more than 300 years old.

View media item 3239

 

[Anthony]

This started the ball rolling -

https://sta.uwi.edu/igds/20thanniversary/conference/images/SaamanTree1001.jpg

- there was one like it in backyard near the changing rooms at Presentation College.
AND a very bright Irish lady's son's response to my brother-in - law's question, and I just followed along.
We were all students.

Good Day
Anthony

 

[chicago1980]

Martial Arts. Trained under a Japanese master from the young age of 4. Many trees and items in the dojo. Spent my High school years with 20 small junipers used the clip and grow method (my Kung Fu teachers influence). My mom accidentally killed the whole lot while I was at a competition in Canada. She did water the trees well.

Flashforward 20 yrs and I am back at it again .

Current working on a Prostrata grown by Henry Haros out of Sierra Vista, Arizona.

 

[CamdenJim]

I've said it before, but I had ignored my wife's fascination with bonsai until I went to a local show and saw Brian van Fleet's Hawthorn. That did it. The next month I went to my first workshop, got a tree, and took off. Doing all the wrong things at first, stubborn even now, but loving every minute.

 

[Guy Vitale]

I've always been drawn to cool looking trees from as far back as I can remember, that was probably the driving force, but I can't remember if it was the Karate Kid movies or a Bonsai kiosk at the local mall, but I got a nursery stock cotoneaster hacked it back trimmed the roots stuck it in a pot, placed it by the window. Watched it rebud and then promptly die a couple weeks later, it's funny looking back as I was thinking to myself what did I do wrong lol! About 8-10 years later an old girlfriend and I were at the same mall but in a bookstore, we saw a bonsai book and she mentioned how cool a wisteria bonsai would be. Well in an effort to impress, I started the wisteria on my avatar the next day from a sucker growing in my mom's garden. 16 years later, this hobby has a hold on me like no other.

 

[maroun.c]

Simple fascination about olives trees and not having space in my garden for one got me looking for a bonsai Olive for the garden. Discovered a friends passion for olive bonsai as well while on the look for a "finished" one. We both purchased the best we could find first olive bonsai that also looked similar. Lost my friend, and nearly lost that olive to root rot. Went crazy to save that olive that is now hanging on a single new Bud that appeared after having a dead olive watered and cared for daily. Started reading about bonsai techniques to save that olive and got addicted. Had to have a cedar pine podacarpusand still on the look for maple juniper Acer palmatum (these simply don't exist here) but still mostly into olives.

 

[Starfox]

For me it was seeing these images.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...99fSAhUJWhQKHcNuDwEQ_AUIBigB&biw=1280&bih=860

This was a total eye opener as really up until then I had only thought of bonsai in a more traditional sense with Pines and Junipers and such. This also came at a time when I was lamenting that I would not be able to plant out in my garden the kinds of trees en masse that I wanted due to space requirements. But what I did know is that I wanted one of these.
So I started digging further, reading lots and found this place and a little over a year here I still am.

 

[milehigh_7]

Somewhere in the archives here is a really long and sappy post I wrote about my beginnings... I will try to find it in the next few days.

 

[M. Frary]

For me it was when I was 24 years old. I was looking at a National Geographic. It had an article about bonsai in it. It had poctures of these incredible old trees in little pots. I had never seen nor heard of a bonsai before. I thought to myself, my God! This has got to be something I would like to try.
So I went down to our county library to see if I could find out anything about bonsai. They had one book. It was written in like the sixties I believe. By a Japanese man that I can't for the life of me remember. But. He wrote about being able to take regular nursery stock and making bonsai out of that. The pictures of the nursery cans were just that. Tin cans. It was written before there were plastic buckets.
He described whathe to look for such as low branching,old looking fat trunks,small foliage. He showed working with conifers mostly. Mainly juniper pine and hinoki cypress. He described what to use for soil. Stuff like small gravel. River or swimming pool sand. And a touch of potting soil. Nuts compared to what we have to choose from today. I used to get almost all of my bonsai mix from the driveway.
So after reading this book I went to a nursery nearest to me to find suitable material. I had to look in the yellow pages. Remember those? There was no Internet then.
I ended up with a hinoki cypress and a procumbens juniper. How I didn't kill them right away I'll never know. I got them home and pulled them out of the nursery buckets and hosed the soil off of the roots. Clean. Just hanging down. In the middle of summer. I then cut them off with an old pair of scissors down to size to put them into shallow containers I had come up with. One was a big wide shalow wooden salad bowl I drilled holes into. The other was this rectangular ceramic thing I bought at an antique shop and bored a hole in that. I put the trees in with the new soil mixture and had bonsai.
Of course I cut them back and crudely wired them up some but I was basically flying blind and by the seat of my pants.
I'll be damned if they both lived! I knew enough to keep them outside. I had them for 6 years but then after an unfortunate accident they died. The old story. Vacation. Trusting your alcoholic brother to water them.
I didn't start up until just what? A little over 5 years ago now. I was working in Connecticut. One day I was driving around and saw a sign that said Bonsai. I stopped to look and met a nice oriental gentleman and sure enough he had bonsai for sale. I was hooked again. I had just recently just gotten my first smart phone and immediately Googled bonsai. I was shocked! They were everywhere. And not only that there were bonsai for sale too! You got to remember that when I first started bonsai years ago I didn't know anyone who had bonsai or even heard of them.
I bought a series a from the guy in Connecticut and promptly killed that.
Then I found forums. This one and 2 others. I read all of the posts and lurked for a while. Just from that I knew that I needed to get me a juniper and an elm. So I went out and did just that. Got me a couple big procumbens,a couple parsons junipers and ordered a seiju elm.
Still have the parsons but the others got ate by voles last winter.
Now I'm a member of a club and have bonsai friends all over the world. All because of this forum. And I'll tell you what. Almost everything I know about bonsai comes from Bonsai Nut. I only visit my club once a year and that's just to hang with Vance really. I get to meet a lot of nice people who like bonsai and also get to see trees other than my own.
I now know I'll never quit this great sport again either.
Because I now have all of the members here to support me.

 

[M. Frary]

Somewhere in the archives here is a really long and sappy post I wrote about my beginnings... I will try to find it in the next few days.

Like the one I just posted?

 

[ajm55555]

I had them for 6 years but then after an unfortunate accident they died. The old story. Vacation.

#1 cause of death for my trees in the past too.

 

[sorce]

FTR AJMcincocincos!

These threads are always great....
We need to remember how giddy we were.

Everytime we do this we think of something new that is old!

A great excercise!

Every time!

Sorce

 

[A. Gorilla]

My dad retired in 1994 and subsequently watched a lot of day time television. He somehow found a bonsai show called New Horizons in Bonsai.

It was a guy in Florida, (Brian Batchelder), who planted his tropicals into coarse sphagnum moss.

Dad got intrigued by it. I got intrigued by it. We killed a bunch of trees etc etc. Actually, he wasn't too bad. He actually just left his alone.

Batchelder was very...interesting. Rumor has it he died from some fungal infection related to the sphagnum.

But here's the thing, and I don't mean to slander his name, but the second season of that show was frankly bizarre. Open shirts, gold chains, a really cutting edge mullet hair cut, and his behavior was manic. It made me think of a possible addiction.

 

[milehigh_7]

Like the one I just posted?

Yea nevermind mine just read Frary's...

 

[Brosmurf24]

Not exactly sure when my love for trees / plants started. I remember when i was a kid pulling up plants i thought were neat and trying to pot them up. I bout my first bonsai when i was 12 it was a juniper bonsai sold on the side of the road i didnt know squat about them and i killed it. However its starting to become an addiction...