A couple of weeks ago I was brousing in a Japanese nursery in Gardena, CA. After 45 minutes of looking around and not finding anything I almost gave up, when the Japanese attendant came to me asking what am I looking for.

After learning that I am looking for old nursery stock for bonsai, he took me to the backyard beyond the Not for Sale sign and showed me a bunch of ten gallon cork oaks (Quercus suber), they were in pretty bad shape. Some of the main branches died back and there were new branches coming out from close to the base. He said that the previous attendant didn't water them enough during the hot summer and they dried out several times, causing die-backs. They must have been extremely neglected, since cork oaks withstand droughts better than almost any other tree.

The original price was $75 per tree, he told me that I can take them for $30 apiece. To his credit, he asked me several times that I am not a beginner, right?

This was perfect for me. I would have cut the long leaders back anyway to create some taper. They had 3-4 inch trunk base and very old, corky bark. Nobody would have bought them for landscaping, but I was pretty excited about them.

They will need one year of good care to regain vigour and start chopping away, but I have plenty of others to work on during this time.

Never underestimate the potential of the refused stock beyond the Not For Sale sign.

Edit: I bought 3 of them, btw. Paid $90 instead of $225. Of course, I didn't buy them only because "they were cheap". I bought them because they had a great nebari and a bark that takes at least 15 to 20 years to develop. But were they sold at the original price, I wouldn't have had the budget to buy them.

My point exactly Attilla, its always worth asking if they have reject stock that isnt on general display. 9 times out of 10, there is always a hidden away area containing damaged or "ugly" trees.

Congratz on your find sir

If your local bonsai nursery can't or wont supply the raw material you need for bonsai they don't deserve to be there in the future. There is of course the pots, tools and wire. There will always be a market for them.

Now there's a few words that I wish I'd said, since I can't think of a thing to add to them, I'll just quote them again, thanks.

Will

Sometimes they can, and sometimes they can't. I like to browse everywhere I can.

Brian

I think that this really sums it up. I watch everywhere I go to see if they have anything that I could use as material.

Also, I would ALWAYS use perfect Bonsai stock...IF I could afford it, which on my salary I can't. So sometimes the "junk" is the only way for me to go.

Jeffrey

Sometimes the "Junk", as seen through the eyes of the nursery man who wants to sell the perfect landscape plant, is exactly what you are looking for in a bonsai. The things that make nursery junk are often the things that make bonsai gold. I don't mean to bad mouth the bonsai stores but for the most part unless you are looking for some high end imported stuff or pretrained material you are not likely to find the kind of raw material you may be looking for.

I look at the nursery trade in much the same way others would look at collecting in the wild. Sometimes the journey is wasted with no results, and often you find much more than you expected. The only difference here is not in having to dig out tree from the mountians but having to dig through a lot of material looking for the trait you desire in a particular tree. The real art to it is in the willingness to get on hands and knees and crawl down nursery lanes. These trees will for the most part,not jump out at you, it is necessary to get your hands dirty fishing around in the nursery pot examining trunks and bases of trees, seeing with your hands the trees that are acceptable.

ok just to throw in my 2 cents.
I work for a wholesale grower who sells to not only retail nurseries but bonsai nurseries which no names will be mentioned. The retail nurseries only want the best quality plants for obvious reasons. The bonsai nurseries however want anything that has an "unhealthy" side to it or an "ill formed" side to it, which makes it easier for them to spend almost no time on the stock to call it "bonsai" and mark it up sometimes 3 times as much as the more healthy stock we shipped to a retail nursery right down the street. So I know where I go looking for stock. As for Rons comments about the kind of bonsai coming from the trash pile; when will one learn to just keep his mouth shut sometimes! Not everyone that posts on this forum has the funds to be able to buy the best quality stock or even want to. I have seen alot of nice trees in the gallerys that I would bet alot of them came from either trash or from cheap stock as for your gallery mister martin nothing impressed me enough to justify all your bad mouthing. My gallery yeah its empty but I dont try to tell people how their tree needs to be grown to fit the ron martin standard.
Sorry if I affend anyone but hey I just had to let it out
Greg

I suspect this varies tremendously from bonsai nursery to bonsai nursery. Bonsai Northwest here in Seattle has lots of promising raw material at very reasonable prices. Perhaps a hundred small, untrained black pines. Another hundred procumbens junipers like the one that I used for my styling contest tree. Another hundred shimpaku junipers. And so forth. Most or all priced well within double digits.

What they don't have is an overabundance of raw material that is going to make national-quality trees. But I don't know many places that do.

Best wishes,
Carl

I stand corrected Carl, on your end of the country there is a larger interest in bonsai than there is here in Michigan, and most of the Mid-West too I suspect. However around here bonsai nurseries are few and far between and those that are around do not carry much more than tropicals and semi-tropicals. The exception would be Chicago.