Bonsai Basic Equipments

The Bonsaist's Basic Equipments are:

- container

- soil components

- fertilizer (any animal or vegetable plant food)

- wire and wire clippers

- small wisk broom

- small trowel

- long spouted watering can

- four seives ranging from 1/4 to 1/32 inch mesh

- pruning knives and shears

- Chopsticks (standard equipment, not merely for their Oriental association, but for packing soul around roots in the minute working area.

Other materials to consider in growing the different Bonsai styles that must be prepared are:

1. Rocks - For rock clasping , rock grown or an accent in the lasnscape. Rocks appropriate for bonsa are rustic type, irregular in shape, rough tecture and water aborbent. 

2. Mosses

3.Pebbles

4. String

5. Plastic bags, jute sacks and some empty wooden box and cans. 

Bonsai Inspiration

My inspiration for the bonsai art came this way...

* A tree clings to a rock, its bare roots grasping the boulder, its trunk and branches gnarled by the elements of wind and weather; its age is measured in centuries, its size in inches.


* Long ago the Japanese came to admire the dwarfed trees of their rugged landscape, seeing in them an inspiring battle of life triumphing over hardship. Rescued from mountainside, seashore or bog, potted and tenderly nurtured, these dwarfed trees won an honoured place in the Japanese culture. It has been treated as an object of aesthetic appreciation and philosophic meditation; out of this custom grew the Art of Bonsai.

The art of bonsai has been practiced for many centuries in Japan, and even longer in China. Bonsai, to both Japanese and Chinese, means the same: "a plant in a container'.

Th cultivation of Bonsai is an art in the truest sense, as it requires the subordination and handling of materials, albeit living to an aesthetic end. The difference between it and other arts, such as sculpture and painting, is that in the latter cases a complete work in finite, whereas Bonsai is infinite, and requires control and training throughout its life.

The bonsai art as practiced today dates mainly from the Meiji restoration period way back in 1968. As japan started to trade with the west, the demand for these natural treasures among the affluent class of the west soon exhausted the natural supply of dwarfed trees, causing professional bonsai growers to produce artificially dwarfed trees from seeds and cuttings. Thus the Art of Bonsai Making.

{Next Tools and materials for bonsai}

The Art of Bonsai Making

Bonsai culture in the Philippines is quite exquisite, as viewed from other countries.

Leyte, which offers lush forest on the countryside offers a broad source of bonsai specimens.

Aside from bonsai making, and bonsai culture, 'bonsai hunting' is also an exciting and related activity as well.

For hobbiest, this is an exciting stage in Bonsai making.

But for those who still wonders, how the exquisite and rare beauty of nature was captured in a Bonsai tree, this will be an enligtenment to the mystery behind bonsai making.

This is how I felt when I cross my path with "The Art of Bonsai Making".

So I promise to myself, that I will teach myself, how bonsais are exactly made, and to do experiments on many ways a bonsai should be styled, so that I will immmerse myself on the Art of Bonsai Making.

This will be entire theme for my next and future posts.

 

{Next: Bonsai Inspiration}