Reviews for The Art of Bonsai: Creation, Care, and Enjoyment

The average rating for The Art of Bonsai: Creation, Care, and Enjoyment based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-30 00:00:00 Carl Michaelis This is a comprehensive guide for anyone who just starts his bonsai aspiration. Recently I bought my first bonsai tree, after two years of reading around the internet. The dwarf tree was standing in a store where my girlfriend and me were to buy some flowers. It was so perfect (in my eyes) that I decided it is time to delve in caring about it (some call it love from first sight). This is the story of how I met my tiger bark ficus buddy :) Now, having a tree at home I had to quickly learn how to care about it. After a small research I learned that this is one of the best guides for beginner to advanced bonsai-master (after the literally impossible to find book of master John Naka). It covers in details all the important steps and techniques including watering patterns, defoliation, pruning, roots care, selection of soils and special care based on types of trees. It even goes into detailed review of many species and how to care about them from A to Z. Having read the book and equipped with a proper tool-set I have already applied a number of changes to my tree-friend. Judging by the healthy look and new offshoots, it seems he likes it :) I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to have bonsai-hue of his green thumb!

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-14 00:00:00 Larry Jacobsen From the synopsis I expected a "my first bonsai" guide, but at the same time it went way more in-depth than expected in some topics, it felt like it glossed over some others. I like plants, and gardening in general is really appealing for me, and the idea of making a bonsai of a tree my grandfather planted to keep the memory of it alive when he inevitably cuts it, as he tried to do before, made me very enthusiastic, but reading this sapped all of it away even before I realized that I just couldn't care properly for this hypothetical bonsai because I live in an apartment, and therefore couldn't let the little tree 'outside'. My disliking for this book comes in equal parts misunderstanding the objective of it and being frustrated at my inability to actually try and put the things in practice and the awful formatting of the ebook edition I had, that made mistakes like using 'b's instead of 'h's in words, and vice versa, quite frequently (also the quality of the images was precarious at best).