Online Bonsai Education: Developing Deciduous Bonsai

Bonsai Empire continues to innovate and provide much-needed bonsai education. Their newest offering is all about deciduous trees featuring Prunus, Ulmus, Quercus, Carpinus, and Acer genera. The lectures and demonstrations are provided by three leading bonsai artists and teachers.

Harry Harrington shows us masterly carving skills on a field Elm in four segments: Carving Preparations, Finishing the Carving, Advanced Carving Techniques, and the Initial Styling of the Elm. His demonstrations are easy to follow, and he provides excellent advice so that you, too, can choose the right tools and technique for the job at hand. The final results look incredibly natural. Who needs time and weather when you can carve like Harry?

Mauro Stemberger uses two species, Cherry and Oak, to demonstrate deadwood work, defoliation, development planning, styling, and branch selection. His demonstrations are thorough and provide lots of take-aways.

Walter Pall, a well-known and respected bonsai pioneer, artist, and educator, introduces a powerful technique with a controversial name: Hedge Pruning. This method allows you to develop better, faster, ramification, and maintain a large number of trees. He explains the theory in detail, demonstrates the work and discusses the seasonal timing. He uses this approach on his collection of almost 1000 trees, which he admits, is too many for a single person. Then he tells a story of how he discovered this technique over 15 years ago. Since then, maintenance work has become more manageable. In a follow-up lesson, he defoliates the entire tree and shows how to edit branches to improve the structure.

Online Bonsai Education has never been better. There’s a wealth of knowledge delivered to our screens in high definition videos by top bonsai artists and educators from all over the world. Whether it’s Bonsai Empire, Bonsai Mirai Live, or Bjorn Bjorholm’s Bonsai U, the benefits of engaging with these resources will elevate the quality of your bonsai with craft-based techniques, horticultural knowledge, seasonal practices, and design advice.

A word of warning. Once you engage Online, sophisticated algorithms will flag you as a consumer of bonsai knowledge. They will deliver a tsunami of videos on bonsai for your perusal. Choose wisely, and remember to save some time to actually work on your trees!