u/happytrees2be and I are doing a presentation on oak bonsai for our club this Saturday. Reply with a pic of your oak bonsai and I'll include a link to this thread in our presentation.

My seed-grown Adenium, Glory. I've been developing her into a literati–cascade-style specimen, focusing on the exposed caudex and long, sweeping branches. She has a caudex circumference of approximately 22 inches and produces prolific, double pink blooms.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the branch structure and overall composition, particularly how the silhouette could develop as the tree matures.

Honestly those two are my only bluebell in stock, but I gotta release it for a good deal. Finished cutting all the leafs in one sitting. Took me a whole 3 hours to finish it. With a little help of caffeine and nicotine.

See a lot of people posting Portulacaria Afra cuttings, and consider myself a broader bonsai beginner… but as far as Ports here is my 2 cents and pics (Portulacaria Afra, both defoliated this spring and fall cuttings shown, 5/8 years in training): 1) grow as much as possible every year and trim 95% every year, or you will never get a nebari / thick trunk / proper branch reduction 2) extremely fast draining soil / maximum fertilizer / maximum sun / daily watering if soil + sun means daily soil drying (don’t rot them, #1 way they die), 3) CUT AND GROW to shape… cut back hard / defoliate and keep them healthy and they will sprout everywhere you could possibly want a branch. Wire only works on long established branches (as seen in #1) and not with wrapping around the branches, only year+ or longer application pulling strong branches into position, stop wasting your time wiring any port branch that isn’t fully woody. Just my two cents, not a lot of port lovers here so sharing what works for me.

Finished styling this bad boy today with Zuma Fleischmann of Bonsai West. I got it in early May, let it grow all summer, wired it to the tips, and then formed the pads and set them, and Zuma built the apex. Needs a year or so to fill out some thinner spots, but I am very happy with it. She’s about 40” overall. About 30 years old with great movement and deadwood.

I/wehave about 32 hours into it, inlcuding three 1-on-1 sessions with Zuma where he watched me like a hawk. He tackled the apex today while I watched, but the wiring was mine, forming the pads, and setting most of them. His manner of i instruction was to wire a pad and then have me do the rest Same for setting them

I’m a book collector, and my advice to newbies is always to buy fewer books of better quality. same here, which I finally acted on: start with excellent material.

As I was leaving, Zuma was showing me some great starter material… On to the next one!

Shine on

It's been a couple years since I brought in my shohin Kingsville Boxwood. I purchased this tree about 15ish years ago from a guy in San Jose who was moving to europe. The foliage was a solid helmet of green, that I opened up and have to constantly keep at. The trunk doesn't thicken at all but it grows lots of leaves.

It's in a nice glazed pot from Taiko Earth. The stand is by Ole Lausten and the accent is a fern in one of my RCP pots.

I’ve been doing bonsai for a few years now and I wanted to start selling some pieces. Here I have a thuja twin trunk and an old gold juniper. Both were nursery stock I’ve been training a couple years now. Just curious what price points I should be starting at when selling pieces like these. I am located in California if that helps at all and I was thinking of selling them on Facebook marketplace. Any tips or information would be appreciated as well.

I collected this hackberry in March 2021. The original photo is near the beginning of the video—it was pretty unremarkable material at the time.
My goal in this session was to keep the upper growth in check while giving the long lower branch more priority. I also used aluminum wire to adjust branch direction and the front-to-back arrangement.
It’s still in development rather than a finished design. I’m keeping these records to see how the structure changes over time.
I’d be interested to hear how others would balance the upper growth against that long lower branch at this stage.

I just removed very large decades old shrubs from in front of my porch. Two are Chinese holly, one ilex cornuta. The goal wasn't to harvest yamadori, but now that they're out, are these work throwing in grow boxes?

today it occured to me that thigmomorphogenesis can be beneficial when developing a plant into bonsai. it can stunt linear growth while creating stronger trunks which sounds ideal for a bonsai plant.

On a rainy day for this hornbeam

First pic is after a full season of ownership, leaves are getting ready to fall. That was 2025. Next spring 2026 only bottom half of the tree came back. The crown pretty much died back. I checked and the pot is completely root bound. So I left it to grow all season with plenty of watering and will repot in spring 2027. It definitely has a lot of growth now. I will take some pics of the bare plant and see what I’m going to do with the branching and ramification. Bonsai always keeps you thinking. It was a good year!

Posted a pic of my RoR Premna here yesterday and people seems to like it, so here's my other big bonsai.

Dimensions: L: 35.4" W: 31.5" H: 27.6"

Inherited this 7ys ago and it was a bit of a mess. Did what I could but I think it will still need a few nore years to grow out the canopy. I'll probably need to spend more time wiring all the individual branches at some point. Any critique will be appreciated as I'm just a self learnt hobbyist.

Is this bad for the tree?