The Bonsai Box

Only so much as whisper to a serious bonsai enthusiast that you are thinking of growing bonsai trees in a window box and you will probably be greeted by howls of protest. But if you are unfamiliar with the art of growing bonsai—and it is an art, and no less surrounded with ritual than the Japanese tea ceremony itself—you could make a very creditable start with a few small subjects on your windowledge. These need not be expensive but they will give you the opportunity to practise some of the bonsai techniques and to see whether the conditions your window ledge offers are right for these rather demanding subjects. If they are, and you have been bitten by the bug, you will feel more confident about treating yourself to more mature, and more expensive, trees. If the enthusiasm wanes, or your lifestyle does not admit of the frequent watering necessary in very hot weather, you will still have had the pleasure of creating a tiny forest of seedlings, or a mini landscape of rocks and trees.

Mature trees are sometimes offered for sale in shops and garden centres but unless these have staff who know how to care for them properly I would hesitate to buy. Go instead to a bonsai specialist, and here you will be able to buy mature trees and also small seedlings of beech, silver birch, larch,hawthorn or maple, or perhaps rooted cuttings of some of the smaller-leaved garden shrubs such as cotoneaster or pyracantha. These, although not established bonsai, will have been prepared for bonsai growing.

Seedlings and cuttings are sold still growing in small plastic pots and the first step is usually to lift them from these and prune the roots, to fit them into smaller pots. This is quite different from the normal repotting treatment, but with bonsai the aim is to keepthe subject small, not help it grow bigger. If you are buying from a specialist you should ask when the seedling was last root-pruned and when it should be done again. With luck, if pruning is necessary he will do it for you while you watch so that you will know how to do it for yourself when the time comes, usually in the dormant season between November and March and ideally just before new growth appears in February or March. The procedure is to shake away the soil, tease out the roots that will have been growing around the sides of the pot until they are fully extended, then trim these back by about a third. The tree is then returned to a smaller pot, probably no larger than 2 inches across and inches deep, and fresh compost added. This must be packed in very tightly—the Japanese use a chopstick—so that the maximum soil is available.

Leaf pruning is something that goes on throughout the growing season and consists of trimming selected leaves in half across the leaf. This encourages the development of other, smaller leaves, after which the original half-leaves drop off. Leaves should never be trimmed off as far back as the stalk; snip cleanly half-way down. Deciding which leaves to prune and which branches to stop is what bonsai is all about. An expert will take no less time than a beginner, and probably more, because the tree must be examined from all angles and its natural habit of growth encouraged and enhanced. Sometimes a specialist will do pruning, especially root pruning, for you if you take your trees back to him; watching him work is an education in itself.

Properly grown, bonsai trees should be in the tiny frost-proof stoneware pots designed for them and usually imported from Japan. These have large holes in the base, so as to allow good drainage. Bonsai trees need regular watering but water must be able to drain away very freely.

For window ledge work you have two choices. You can dispense with the box and grow specimens in the correct Japanese pots, standing on the sill. Safer perhaps is to keep the tiny stoneware pots standing on gravel just inside a box so that they are contained within the box and less likely to be swept away by high winds or the incautious opening of a window. Essential, if you want to retain the sympathy of a specialist grower, is to grow them in the right pots; you really cannot expect him to take an interest in pruning your trees if you aren’t growing them, according to his rules, properly.

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