The secret to buying a decent bonsai candidate at a REGULAR nursery is....

After years of buying nursery trees and trying to make Bonsai out of them, my advice is- every time you go to a regular nursery and see a tree you think you should buy, take that money out of your wallet, put it in a jar or somewhere you won't touch it, save it up and then use that accumulated larger dollar amount to buy a good tree that is well suited for bonsai from a reputable grower.

You CAN find decent material at old nurseries sometimes- a little Satsuki or Kurume azalea perhaps or a Maple or Crepe Myrtle you could chop down and years later make it into a nice tree... The best bet is usually Procumbens Nana Junipers it seems! Some places actually stock them regularly and they make a nice little Bonsai! But... You can almost always do better with stock made for Bonsai!
 
I'm with the "skip it" crowd. While it's fun to browse twigs, the usable material goes to club events and such.
Good luck finding nursery "graveyards." Many locally go to great lengths to conceal their dumps.
 
You can get decent material in nurseries depending on where you live. The important thing about nursery material is the cost to attrition rate. It is a fact in bonsai due to one thing or another you are probably gong to lose a number of trees your first year or two in bonsai. Understanding that it has always bothered me how quickly people will suggest a new grower should go out and spend what amounts to trees costing three digits a piece. Maybe this kind of price does not bother you but I find it rather discouraging to me to think I am probably going to lose a tree I just spent $200 to $300 dollars for. That's just me. There are a lot of people in bonsai where this kind of money is not an issue to them. Your avatar says you live in California. I am not sure where Fair Oaks is but my very first Mugo Pine was purchased in a nursery in San Rafael California. I killed it because I didn't know how to care for it. That has changed.

I included two nursery browse videos and one fundamental reduction video of one of the same Mugo Pines I collected last summer.



 
Last edited:
onlyrey said:
Look in the back for the ugly ass trees and shrubs that nobody wants to buy because are ugly. These ugly trees/shrubs are often forgotten and overgrowing in their nursery pots.
Click to expand...

And can often be gotten at discount. ALWAYS ASK! All they can do is say no so keep trying;).
 
Dalmat is correct I may not have pointed that out in the above videos; it is seldom that you can go through a nursery and find a good tree just by looking over the field to see if something jumps out at you. If you are not willing to get your hands dirty and feel around the base in the muck, needles, spent fertilizer and crud you probably will not find any thing. In all deference to Brian I visited a few nurseries in that part of the country this last summer when my wife and myself made a trip down to Gerogia and all of the historic sites we could find up the East Coast to Maryland. When we could find a nursery we would stop at it and most had little in the way of decent conifers.
 
Learn what characteristics make good candidates.
Go to many different nurseries and look at 1000s of trees.

Learn to critically evaluate a tree and be truly honest about its potential, not what you hope it is.

Leave empty handed more often than not.

You can learn from garden nursery material. You can get a handle on simply learning how to keep things alive, repotting, basic pruning, wiring and how trees respond to the above before you invest in better material to grow with.
 
Look at good trees and realize the one true secret of bonsai: Though it is possible to grow a really good bonsai from seed that is really God's realm, we, don't have the time. The best bonsai even if collected, are made by taking larger material and reducing it down into great bonsai.
 
It's difficult for someone new to bonsai to go to a non-bonsai nursery and know what to look for to make a good bonsai. Once you have some expetience, then it makes more sense because you'll know what you're looking for.

I suggest for most beginners to buy their starter materials from a bonsai nursery or club member who has already taken the raw stock and turned it into rough stock. Once given a little start like that, the beginner can learn how it grows, heals (or doesn't), etc. It may (or not) have been reported into bonsai soil. It's also important to learn how bonsai soil differs from "potting soil". Something already started will help the beginner have a successful start.
 
I agree with you Adair but: This summer I had a chance to make it through a number of nurseries in you part of the country and I was appalled at the paucity of material, and locations. Nurseries seemed to be very sparse and far between. However; the cost involved in the bonsai nursery means you have to find one, there is not one on every corner. If you desire to drive, walk or crawl on hands and knees, the distance involved could mean taking off a couple of days work. My nearest bonsai nursery is 35 miles away and she only deals with tropical trees. I don't think there is one nearer than Ohio, or Pennsylvania, either one at least Two-hundred miles away. As to bonsai clubs; there again they are not all that common, in in our case very often the material you may find here is questionable.

I don't mean to make this sound condescending but a couple of you guys seem to think dropping a couple of hundred dollars on a single piece of material is nothing. That's not true for all of us. I spent less that that on all of those Mugos I bought last summer.
 
Ginkgo in farm ditch.image.jpegwhile this one is not the best in the pile, it is a good example of what farms push out due to over population and erosion control.
Here is more. Amur.image.jpeg
 
At 7 years in I am of the opinion that you will not buy nursery material that you have to put less than 10 years structured growing into. Not to say I don't enjoy growing things to grow them, but the zeal to find that instant bonsai in a nursery is no longer there for me. Save your money buy the best material you can from a legitimate source.
 
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