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Originally Posted by rockm
Duh aside, if you're working with a tree that's not worth the effort, why do it? The majority of nursery trees aren't reasonable partners in a bonsai relationship. They're mostly pigs with bad teeth. I've tried with a substantial number of them. They can work out, but most don't. I've moved on to trees that are more attractive from the beginning. That means more up front, but in the long run, it's more satisfying, rewarding and a lot less frustrating.
The journey is fine, but who wants to travel with a pig with bad teeth that needs constant attention and in the end is still a pig with bad teeth?
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That all comes back to my original argument. Regardless of the source of the material it all comes to choices. It is not determined by cost, by source, by collection, or by price, it is determined by the eye of the chooser. I have said it before but it bears repeating: I have seen some really butt-ugly collected trees that will not make a good bonsai in a life time. But because the tree was collected the seller was able to demand a high price and someone else was willing to pay the price. Thinking that a tree will automatically make an excellent bonsai just because it was collected is as wrong as any other scenario you could come up with to prove the opposite.
I think that some think that I do what I do with nursery trees by just grabbing any old nursery tree and hacking away at it. This most certainly is not true, I have told people many times how I select my Mugo Pines so I will not do so again here, but there is a clear purpose to what I do and it seldom fails me.
I have three trees in my collection that were obtained as pre-bonsai. One of them I selected myself and paid $70 for it. It has turned into a first class bonsai. I have one Shimpaku that cost me $70 that was obtained by lottery in a workshop in Chicago a number of years ago that was known on my web site as the ugly Shimpaku. Years latter it is still an Ugly Shimpaku. I also have a Korean Hornbeam that was acquired as work shop material by lottery that cost $45 dollars. It is more a source for cutting than anything else but will take many more years to make a decent bonsai. So the argument that you should choose pre-bonsai material from professional growers does not provide the magic bullet either.
The defining argument regardless of what side of the fence you fall off of, should be this: If you cannot see a bonsai in it you should not buy it, collect it, or accept it in a work shop.
Your wrote:
The majority of nursery trees aren't reasonable partners in a bonsai relationship. They're mostly pigs with bad teeth. I've tried with a substantial number of them. They can work out, but most don't. I've moved on to trees that are more attractive from the beginning.
If you believe this I suppose that is your business, I could say the same about a lot of collected trees I have seen. If I see a good collected tree worth paying good money for I might grab it, but collected and good are not necessarily synonymous, any more than nursery and bad are; the same can be said for professionally grown pre-bonsai.
If you are picking bad nursery material it is because you are not looking for the right things in the material you are searching through. If I may use Mugo Pines as an example, I will go through an average of maybe fifty trees to find one that fills my requirements. The real problem with nursery trees is in being over whelmed by the number of choices and the work involved in searching through them all.