Bonsai Plants and Gardens

The ancient art and peaceful pastime of Bonsai is the practice of growing normal-sized trees and plants but influencing their growth habits and patterns to produce a smaller version of the plant that is shaped to your own taste. Bonsai enthusiasts enjoy hours of culture and cultivation. They produce the desired results by controlling the amount and quality of the daylight their plants receive and carefully pruning roots and branches to maintain the desired reduced size of the plant.

Some plants are more suited than others to the techniques of Bonsai. The Bald Cypress Bonsai is one of the most popular Bonsai trees. It is valued for the way it forces new leaf buds out along the bare trunk after the trunk has been nicked with a sharp blade.

Beginner’s Bonsai

The Bald Cypress Bonsai tree is an excellent tree for someone who is just getting started in the art of Bonsai, because it is so forgiving and lends itself to your desires. If you live in the southern United States, you will find the Bald Cypress Bonsai growing prolifically in great numbers outdoors. It is quite practical to expect that you will be able to find an outdoor specimen to bring indoors and apply bonsai techniques to it. If you do not have access to these quantities of Bald Cypress Bonsai, you should be able to find a supply at your local nursery, or order one from a Bonsai supplier.

When converting an outdoor specimen into a Bonsai tree, you should always obey the Bonsai rule of scale. The height of the tree should be approximately six times the width of the base of the tree. This rule will likely require you to trim a great deal of your top growth off; do not be afraid to be aggressive. The tree will grow back in true Bonsai style.

Bald Cypress Bonsai trees are frequently planted in groups in a single container to form a “Bonsai forest.” If you decide to build a forest, remember it always seems to appear more natural when you plant using odd numbers. Try to form your forest from groups of three, five, seven, nine, or eleven individual trees.

Caring For Your Bald Cypress Bonsai

Your Bald Cypress Bonsai prefers wet soil, appearing nearly on the swampy side. Water the tree overhead to simulate rain falling from above, and fill the pot almost to the rim with water. During the summer, you may find it necessary to water your Bald Cypress bonsai twice a day if dry conditions exist. 

This Bonsai tree likes plenty of sunshine and like most Bonsai trees, it prefers to live outdoors. Plan to fertilize the tree once a week during the springtime. You can taper this down to once every two weeks during the late spring and fall. Suspend further fertilizer applications as fall gives way to winter. This will permit the required dormancy period so the Bald Cypress Bonsai tree can complete the final life cycle and start over again come spring.