Can You Care For All Bonsai The Same Way?

I am often asked questions about the care and maintenance of bonsai, usually questions like “Can you care for pines the same as a maple bonsai?” or “Do you treat Japanese black pines the same as white pines?” or similar to this.

The simple answer is Yes… but No …and I will go through some of the main reasons why you might treat some trees differently than others in this article.

Basic Care For Bonsai Is The Same

On a very basic level all trees need the same care; they need Air, Water and Sunlight. As long as they have a good balance of these, they should grow and be healthy.

This will just keep them alive (which is of course pretty important) but when it comes to bonsai work, again on a basic level they all need the same maintenance. They will all need Pruned, Styled and Repotted.                

So it sounds like you can treat all bonsai the same, however, this is not true. There are subtle differences I will go through now to make sure you can identify what type of care you should be giving your tree.                              

Broad Bonsai Tree Groupings

The first thing you need to look at is what group your tree falls into. These are broad sweeping terms that can give you a general idea about tree care, but even at this level there are some clear differences between the groupings.  

The 3 main groups are Conifers, Deciduous and Tropical’s. When you separate out trees like this you will see the general approach towards each groups care is slightly different. 

Conifer Bonsai Care

These are trees with needle foliage and are mostly evergreen and need exposure to cold over the winter.

They do not like being root pruned aggressively as their roots is where the tree gets its energy from. They can easily die back if you remove too many needles from a branch. However, a dead branch on these trees can look really cool as they lend well to deadwood features.  

Deciduous Bonsai Care

These trees have leaves, a lot of them will drop these in the winter and they also need a cold period over winter.

These can be root pruned fairly easily and will nearly always produce new buds on older wood, so if the leaves are removed, the branch shouldn’t usually die. 

(you can read more about –Deciduous Maintenance Throughout The year) 

Tropical Bonsai Tree Care

These trees usually have leaves and they are mostly evergreen. These trees cannot handle any kind of cold since they are naturally from my warmer climates. They are used to growing all year long and can usually handle root pruning quiet well.

Different Species Of Bonsai Need Different Care

Once you separate your trees out into groups, they can then be separated down further into species.

For example deciduous trees can be separated down into species like Maples, Elms, Birches or Hawthorns.

Once you have the trees separated out like this you will start to see small differences between how they are cared for and how they grow. 

Broadly speaking you will care for them the same way, but there will be small changes to how aggressively you might prune one species compared to another. You might also see slight differences in things like growth pattern in between the species, or their tolerance to shade or the water requirements may be more than the other.   

For a species like maple you might not prune back as aggressively as can you would with an elm, and likewise its response to this work will not be as aggressive. An elm is far more likely to send a crazy amount of back bud after pruning especially compared to some other deciduous species.

There May Be Differences Between Cultivars

You also need to be aware that general species can be further broken down into individual cultivars where again there can be slight differences to how trees react to work or how they grow and need cared for.

For example you can get a number of different types of Maples, such as Japanese maples, trident maple, sugar maples.

The same is true for elms; you can get Chinese elm, English elm and so on.

Although you will mostly apply the same techniques at the same time to the different species, you might notice that again there are some differences. A trident maple will be pruned more aggressively than a Japanese maple for example.

Know What Species Of Bonsai You Have

These differences in care is why it is very important to find out what type of tree you have and more importantly the exact species. You can sit and watch me hack away at one of my trees on YouTube and you might think you can do this to yours.

If you have a different species to me, you may get a very different result. In fact you may kill your tree.

You need a board overview of what group of trees your tree falls under as this will give you a good general overview of what you should be doing. Then you then need to know what species you have and understand any of the little nuances it may have compared to other trees.

You will not be able to progress your trees as bonsai if you do not know how to properly care for them. You need your trees at optimal health and you need to know what techniques will get the best results with your species.

If you do not know this information, your tree will struggle to progress.

(You can read more about – How To Identity Your Tree)

The Stage Of Development Affects How You Care For A Bonsai

So now you know what species you have, you can easily find out how to care for it… well yes, sort of. Keeping a tree healthy is one thing, knowing when and what to do to make it a bonsai is a whole different issue.

You need to understand what stage of development your tree is at and what you are trying to achieve.

One of the biggest issues I see is people not knowing how to deal with their tree at the stage of development it is at.

When you read a bonsai book, or you see a professional do a demo on the same species as you own, you take information as gospel and you copy it. This can be fine, their information is always going to be correct, but it’s only correct for the stage of development of the tree they are working at.

If you own a seeding Japanese black pine and they are working on a 50 year Japanese black pine …you shouldn’t be copying that. You need to find out what work and care is needed for a Japanese black pine seedling.

Once your tree gets older and reaches a higher state of development, then you can copy what you are reading in the books, it will be more applicable to your tree as it will now be at a similar stage of development.

Doing advanced refinement techniques on a tiny seedling is just going to get you nowhere. As painful as that is, it’s true.

Here are the common stages of development you will find your trees in:

Seedling Care

Regardless of what broad group your tree falls into, if your tree is a seeding you will pretty much just have to ignore it and let it grow for a while. Seedlings need to grow before they can have real bonsai work done to them.

Nursery Stock Care

If you buy a tree from a nursery you will properly need to do some serious work at some point to take it from a nursery pot into a bonsai pot. You may also find that you have to make a few big cuts.

Knowing what type of tree you have bought will dictate how much work you can do and what you can safely chop away without killing your tree. This is especially true when it comes to root work. There can be vast differences between what can be done with different trees. 

Semi Refined Bonsai Care

Once you tree is heading in the right direction, you might want to start refining it. This will see you change techniques from growing a tree that is a seedling, or even nursery stock. Before you will have been mostly letting everything grow out to gain thickness and cutting it back now and again, now you can actually start to do some real bonsai work.

When you reach this stage you will start pruning more and will also probably start styling the tree. There are going to be different decisions based on what type of a tree it is. A conifer is going to be styled very different to a deciduous tree.

Refined Bonsai Care

Once your tree is refined you will really be using the advance techniques and pruning often. You will now be doing “bonsai”. Pretty much everything before this is all about getting the tree healthy and getting it ready to be bonsai.

Now you can start to look to the bonsai masters and see what they do and then bring it to your own trees and start to refine them and turn them into something truly special. 

(You can read more about – What Stage Of Development Is Your Bonsai Tree At?)

Health Of A Bonsai Determines Care

No matter what type or species of tree you have, the one thing they all have in common is that they need to be healthy.

If you can work out how to keep your tree healthy and give it the conditions it wants, you can then focus on making it a bonsai and enjoying it. Each tree will have subtle differences and you need to learn these so you can give them the best care possible.

Conclusion

It’s clear to see that bonsais, or trees in any stage of development do not have the same care and maintenance requirements as each other, it will vary greatly on what type of tree it is and what stage of its journey it is at.

Each tree is different and you will find this when caring for them. So long as you can keep them healthy you will be able to develop them into something amazing.