Bonsai on a budget is possible. It does however, take time, attention to detail and patience; perhaps beyond the realm of more expensive material that only takes unlimited income and the willingness to spend it lavishly as stock dies due to lack of experience in taking care of it. The only big expense you cannot get around is in pots, unless you start making your own. Of course if you do that you have opened a new subject that could be called; "Is it possible to get good bonsai pots on a budget?".

Article to prove my point is soon to follow. I will post details as they occur.

Vance, sorry you have such a dim view on purchasing expensive stock. This sounds a bit socialistic, in that you are appearing to denigrate those who might. I have seen very nice trees come from cuttings and seedlings as well as nursery stock, and I have further seen very nice trees come from collected material and mature material purchsed for continued work. The adage that you can buy the time of others is apropos, in that you are doing just that when you buy developed stock. If you chose to not pay more than $XX.xx for plants that is fine, but to attempt to devalue those who do is of little value in itself.

Regardless, you can do bonsai on a realistic budget (your reality is your reality), however, if you want to put your trees into expensive pots, well that is a conundrum.

Cheers,
John

John,

I don't think he was denigrating people who buy expensive stock. Rather, he was saying that it time and skill to turn inexpensive stock into good bonsai, whereas one could (if one were so inclined) employ a minimum of time and skill by buying something expensive and already pretty well styled. But the flip side is, if one puts in a minimum of time and skill, before long even the most expensive and beautiful bonsai will end up unsightly and perhaps dead.

So the question isn't really how much money one spends on stock, but on what one does with whatever stock one is able to afford.

--Dale

"...unlimited income and the willingness to spend it lavishly..."

OK? John

From a webster's dictionary website (audio)

Main Entry:
1lav·ish
Pronunciation:
\?la-vish\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English laves, lavage, probably from Middle French lavasse, lavache downpour of rain, from laver to wash — more at lavage
Date:
15th century
1: expending or bestowing profusely : prodigal2 a: expended or produced in abundance b: marked by profusion or excess
synonyms see profuse
— lav·ish·ly adverb
— lav·ish·ness noun

I definately think bonsai on a budget is possible.
Personally i only started practicing bonsai a few months back and i've collected about 10 trees all from regular nursery stock. I dont think i paid more then $30 any of them and now having to learn about each trees specific needs and suitable bonsai styles i think i've learned alot more then if i had just bought myself a nice big maple or something. Even if i end up throwing those away or giving away they still taught me alot and gave me alot of experience caring for them.
Overall I think for beginners cheaper nursery stock is an excellent source for learning but i also think that with a keen eye you can find great bonsai specimens at non bonsai nurseries with no problem.

Of course you can, see ernie Kuo's site http://www.geocities.com/erniekuo@sbcglobal.net/

Granted there are some very nice collected junipers in here as well. However, this isn't the only way to do it.

John

Thank you Dale, you hit the nail right on the head of the point I have been trying to make for a couple of years now. I remember an individual that was a member of our club a number of years ago. A very bright and in many was gifted individual who thought he could master bonsai in five years. He spent thousands of dollars on some really nice material from Zuisho White Pines to imported Japanese Black Pines. Sadly he is no longer doing bonsai and as far as I know all of these trees are kindling.

To my way of thinking it is a real dis-service to recommend, push, or embarrass a beginner into spending the kind of money necessary to purchase the kind of stock some feel is the only acceptable material anyone interested in bonsai should spend their time developing. When someone does not know the difference between dog do and shoe polish, high quality stock is not going to be of much benefit to them.
Personally; I feel that a budding bonsaist should have at least five years in bonsai before entertaining the idea of the more expensive pre-bonsai and or collected trees. Details on these issues will be addressed in a future article I am working on and hope to get published within the next two weeks.

But; returning to the original subject of this post, that of what many would consider two mutually exclusive and opposed concepts; bonsai and budget, yes it is possible. Here is an interesting thought; Is it possible to fail at bonsai with an unlimited budget and access to first rate instruction?

YES I have seen it happen, see above.....

Just wanted to make the point that while there are many opinions on what we do as bonsai here in this country it is very different for us than someone raised in the culture where trees and materials have been handed down generation after generation. We just don't have access to much of what materials and resources some of the other cultures have had even if we go to those places and take classes and learn from masters.

I started learning ten years ago (I am fifty now) I am self taught and know that I have just touched this great ancient art and while I have the rest of my life to continue learning I don't have a great grandfather who knew anything about this, nor a grandfather or father or even a older brother. I won't inheret trees that someone has trained and worked, trees grown from seed that are now twenty years old and partially trained, or even someone to show me the best places to find what I want.

What I do will never be what they did so it will have to be something else. It may still be bonsai but it will be what I make it now, and in this country. I can emulate their styles but I will also go my own way and try new things and learn what I can and if anyone says that what I do isn't bonsai that will be just another opinion to my and you know what they say about opinons.

im a relitive newbie to bonsai so my input isnt that important. but i think cuttings and cheaper material are a good way to learn alot of the basics and tryin diff techniques and stuff so u dont have to kill expensive stuff while learning. and then when your confident about your ability then save up and buy some nicer stock. just my 2 cents

Your two cents are worth a great deal, and that's the point; how well are you able to spend those two cents? This has always been the heart of my argument; many that are new to bonsai wouldn't know a good piece of stock if it jumped up and down and carried a placard accompanied by a marching band.

Most people in bonsai have five years under their belt before they start getting a clue about the kind of material they should be using. By this time they have gone through a potting cycle or two, they have probable killed a tree, but--- they have also learned they can keep a tree alive for more than a couple of months.

Until you get to this point it is ridiculous to even consider collecting material from the wild. Pre-bonsai might be an option provided some sort of more advanced guidance has been obtained, but the heart of all endeavours concerning bonsai is in an ability to know good material and how to recognize it.

Some people think that a piece sold as pre-bonsai is automatically a good piece of stock. It is true it may posses some traits like root development or initial pruning but this is not always true. The truth is; there are good pre-bonsai and bad pre-bonsai, but most pre-bonsai are priced quite a bit higher than a similar tree from a nursery. The problem is in learning to tell the difference; knowing what you are looking for and why. These lessons are best learned with less expensive material.

In my experience the best place for a novice to begin is in the nursery trade where the price of material is not so high as to frighten the grower into inactivity out of fear of killing an expensive tree, or discourage them when they do kill a tree. Seeds and cuttings are too slow to provide an aggressive regime of active study. Collected trees are too complicated to collect successfully, and are very fussy to take care of for a number of years before training can begin, and lastly, we have discussed pre-bonsai material and its pit falls for the novice.