About

About Back Garden Bonsai

The goal of this site is to share as much information as possible about bonsai.

If you are new to bonsai it can be very easy to get lost in the sea of information. It can seem like you need very fancy trees from Japan or expensive tools and courses. These are all great, but it is not the only way to do bonsai.

Plenty of people around the world use basic, local trees and slowly turn them into powerful bonsai by using some simple skills and repeating them year after year.

Bonsai is not hard, you just need a little bit of knowledge and time and you can turn most material into something interesting.

The Back Garden Bonsai Youtube Channel is a place where you can see this happen. I show my trees in a time lapse through the year to show you trees things can slow evolve into bonsai   

This website will give you the information you need. It doesn’t matter what you are starting with, you need the basic knowledge to slowly push your tree into a bonsai. This site is full of articles that will help with exactly that. (You can also read our Anti-AI Policy )

The more you read, the more you will learn and the better your trees will grow, no matter what you are growing or where you are doing it. Bonsai can be enjoyed by everyone and you will soon realise it is easy …just slow.

About Ian

Hi! I’m Ian

I am the owner and writer of this site and Youtube channel. It’s all ran by me, a guy who grows little tress in his garden and shares his knowledge.  

I discovered bonsai in 2014 by accident and I’ve been hooked ever since. 

In late 2013 my flatmate went to a Mexican restaurant. The restaurant had a glass bowl full of matches and he took some home …. However, they were not actually matches.  They were chilli seeds, disguised as matches. They where put in a draw and ignored until for some reason in spring 2014 I decided to grow the chilli seeds for fun.

While germinating these seeds I started looking into how to keep plants small as i was living in a small apartment. The first thing I stumbled across was Fairy Gardens. They are kinda cool looking and they did tick all the boxes as such …Luckily somewhere in those weird search results was ‘bonsai’  as soon as I set eyes on the first tree I was in awe. 

My mind was blown. These trees where just incredible. I had to have one. 

I initially found YouTube videos from Graham Potter. (You can find a list of all the bonsai YouTube channels here) He had these huge ugly stumps and managed to turn them into beautiful bonsai. I watched these videos endlessly. I just wanted to know anything and everything about these trees. 

As I did more research I found that you can basically make a bonsai from pretty much any plant that gets a woody stem. You didn’t need the 100 year old yew stump. You could use all sorts of trees, shrubs, herbs and bushes. My little chilli that was starting to sprout could, and would be a bonsai one day. 

Since that day my obsession and collection has grown and luckily I’ve moved house. So now I am growing Bonsai …in a Back Garden.

Thanks, Ian

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