DavidN

Great thread bonsaial. Very important for new people.

Just wanted to add a few things and ask a few questions.

Is this nursery a retail nursery? The prices are pretty much spot on for a retail nursery in comparison to here in Australia.

One piece of advice to people that I believe worked for me on top of all your advice is for new people to have quite a few trees to works on when they are new. I'm sure this has been discussed substantially already but it is vital to learn different techniques on different trees when you are starting out. You can try different species and different styles and this will avoid you babying a tree to death. I started with maybe over 50 trees within the first 6 months I did bonsai. It taught me endless bits of knowledge that have provided me with worthwhile experiences.

Once I became better at looking after trees, 3 years into it, I started to acquire better bonsai material. I also acquired a couple of exceptional, almost "finished" trees. What this does is allow you to concentrate on better bonsai material that can be displayed and shown at bonsai exhibitions and other things like that. These better trees will keep you inspired about bonsai and keep you working vigilantly on your other pre-bonsai trees.

Within a couple more years your collection of better bonsai has increased and now you need to spend quality time on your better trees to keep them looking good. It is now time to get rid of trees that you know personally think will never really make it to the stage that you wanted. Sell these off and you'd be surprised at the value some of them would fetch. With the money you could invest in better tools, more wire, pots or a single better tree.

I hope this makes sense and it is how my experience with bonsai has eventuated and is why I believe I am even more excited today about it then when I first started.

I hope this is making sense.

Another thing is that aligning yourself with a bonsai club is vital to learning and pick out an experienced member that you could learn off and is willing to help you.

Last thing is that down here in Melbourne Australia we don't have to travel long distances to find retail nurseries and wholesale nurseries. Affiliation with bonsai clubs will allow access to select few of wholesale bonsai nurseries and huge savings.
The stalked junipers you showed above cost AUS$8, ~US$4. So if you are lucky you could get even cheap stock to work on.

Anyway thanks for reading if you were able to get through it all.
Hope this helps new people out.

David