Hi again everyone,

As promised here is the fisrt installment of my book on bonsia.

Creating Your Own Bonsai for Under $20

By: Harold Yearout ©Copyright 2026 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved

 

Without limiting the rights under the copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into any type of retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the above copyrighted owner and author of said material here within.

 

Chaperone: What is bonsai?

Very good question so let’s dive right in and find the answer that many people do ask and that is what bonsai is.

Bonsai is a type of plant that is most often woody in nature and can be created from trees and shrubs, most any kind of plant material can be made into a bonsai. The choice then becomes that of the person interested in creating their own bonsai.

I do not want to dive into a lot of history here as that can be boring to a lot of individuals. But suffice it to say at the very least bonsai can be traced back well over a thousand years and started in the Chinese culture. Then later in history Japanese monks traveled to Japan and were introduced to the art of this most enticing horticulture art form by Chinese Masters.

Since that time, it has evolved though generations of countless individuals and constant work and creation to be what it is today a most beautiful and rewarding form of creating tress and other types of plantings to simply resemble what we would see all around us every day in every part of the world growing in the ground. The difference here is we as bonsai enthusiasts try to create the same tree or shrub or other material and grow it in a pot.

Let me tell you a story of how I became interested in creating bonsai. I was sitting out in my back yard one day having my morning coffee and I began to look over at my maple tree that I had planted many years ago in my garden for shade. Then my mind began to wonder what would that same tree look like growing in a pot?

Well needless to say, that day was when my feet first hit the ground running to my nearby nursery with the thought in mind to get a maple and make it into a bonsai.

Now I do not mind telling all of you that I’m sort of a frugal guy when it comes to wasting my money if there are other ways to make the same thing happen without spending a lot. So, as I arrived, I began to look around, and they had several small trees of various types of maples on hand, but they wanted thirty dollars for one. I thought to myself it is not much and it is only in plastic pot.

Tall and lanky looking simply because no one had ever pruned any of these tresses since their start. I wanted to have a plant that would be more rounded and fuller and not so tall and lanky.

Then there was also soil to be considered and a pot if I wanted a nice one and not plastic and of course, I had no scissors of shears of any kind to prune with. So back home I went and back to my think tank and computer to do more research.

What I found out was that maples are easy to stratify from seed so at that time it was getting along to about the proper month to go in search of and collect some maple seed.

Our city has a large community college with many old maple trees lining the campus paths and walkways, so I began collecting seeds—free is always a decent price. In about an hour, I gathered enough to grow many maples, assuming they all sprouted and developed roots.

Admittedly, growing a tree from seed is not the most practical way to start, but it was how I began. I went through the germination process and, to my surprise, produced more than a hundred viable seeds that had sprouted and developed roots.

I carefully transferred the little sprouts to a wooden flat. I planted them in only sand to start with so they could get just big enough for me to work with. Sand drains easily and so they would not have wet feet. As a couple of weeks went by, I had several little maples to start with so I took one nice one and planted it, I used an old terracotta pot I had laying around for my pot and some regular potting mix I had from the last year.

The tree grew well and developed into a beautiful specimen. Over the next few years, I refined it and eventually traded it to another collector for several bonsai pots.

I have here now a public domain picture of a Maple tree planted over a rock just to give you an idea of what can be created with time and patients.

 

As you can see from the picture, a maple can grow in a pot and be trained in a format called root over rock which translates to the roots of this plant growing over a rock and planted in a pot so that the roots also reach the soil level and take solid root there.

Of course, the same type of tree can be planted in many styles and trained for decades, if you desired to learn and put forth the effort required.

In the next chapter, we will explore how to stratify seeds and grow and train trees from seed, including the materials needed and the steps involved. Thanks for reading my posts and I hope you can get some thing form this first but short installment of how to create your own bonsai for under twenty dollars.

By: Harold Yearout ©Copyright 2026 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved