I love all your bonsai's, your Fukien tea is my favorite, is that an actualy tea plant (Camelia Sinensis)? Your succulent wall looks great too, you're giving me a lot of ideas about what I should do with my yard. Unfortunately, my yard is small and I have to make room for 3 Lychees, 6 mangoes, 4 Cherimoyas, 5 Drgonfruit, 2 blueberries, an orange, lemon, asian pear and peach tree!

Love your bonsai and your decoration!

Simon i will post some more pictures this weekend, my yard is a typical small dooryard here about 70X90, a 1/4 acre is a little over 100 x 100

all my trees are spaced 10 feet away from each other, the key for me is having the larger trees around the perimeter and the ones i will prune smaller more towards the center of the yard. all my citrus are in containers so they will all remain small specimens. my bananas are what border my house all around

do you still have those bougaivilleas? i would chop them down real low, dig them up, bare root them and make bonsai specimens, you would be surprised what you could get for them on craigslist

oh and Fukien Tea is a popular bonsai specimen, it is not tea leaf.

Yup, still got the bougaivilleas. My plants are huge and I think I'll try to chop them down really small and do a bonsai like you suggested. Can I pretty much chop them down close to the roots and leave about 8 inches of above ground trunk? Do you think they will survive. Also, how much can I trim the roots? I assume the roots are very long and go deep into the soil.

Great pics of your jakfruit and bamboo wall! Also, love your pink-flowered-bonsai; it looks almost fake but nice. How old is your cheena jackfruit?

Bo

that temple orange was a rootbound defoliated specimen i found at a nursery the guy didnt even want to sell me.
i put it into that pot you see there just the other day, i didnt even train it yet.

you can do the same with your bougs, try to find the ones with the gnarliest trunks down low, like in these specimens

you prune them down to a stump and encourage tiny branching and clip any vigorous growth. this is called ramification.

Bougavilleas are so strong and hardy, on older bonsai specimens you can use a dremel on their trunk
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dig them up, bare root them (i use chopsticks, it saves the fine roots) and put them in a really good draining soil, they like acidic soil so i might try a mix with alot of bark fines like orchid mix

you can prune the lower roots but try to save alot of them, get a nice shallow bonsai pot that has two holes in the bottom or drill two holes in whatever you are using and run copper wire out the bottom and back up through the other hole and twist it around the rootball so it stands upright. Bougs will take a good root pruning, just dont let them dry out into shock afterwards

this is how im going to try and train my temple orange for the future

and eventually try to grow a single fruit to maturity to hang in the center of the crescent

The tea garden area looks great for just sitting outside, enjoying the aura and chilling out at the end of the day.

That is awesome!!! I love both those Bougs you posted, especially the shorter squater one. If I can get my huge gigantic plants to look anything like that, I am going to be so happy. Oh crap, you just gave me the Bonsai bug. I really like the Bonsai Japanese Maples but never purchased any. I think aside from my attempt at chopping down my Bougs to Bonsai status, I will also attempt to grow some fruit trees as Bonsai. Hmmm, perhaps a Lychee, peach, I wonder what will look good as a Bonsai? Thanks for giving me my next obsession, LOL!

Well done.
You got a Feng Shui thing going on with the slate, water, coral rocks and dwarf plants. I have read that mangoes can be made into bonsai if you are not careful due to them being in the pine family or related somehow. Some mangoes are described as having a turpentine kind of taste plus we have a Turpentine mango. Turpenes (Terpenes)are found in pine, Tea Tree (Melaleuca), eucalyptus, peppermint and much much more

Here is a link that might be useful: mango bonsai

-Simon, I love Bonsai maples as well but they do not do well here outdoors. Im looking currently for an interesting baobob specimen

you can make anything into a bonsai if your so inclined. i have seen Royal Poinciana bonsai

because of its taproot, mango would not be an ideal specimen in my mind, but can be done like in your link.

Carambola is perfect, small leaf (although you can reduce leaf size with defoliation, not the flower and fruit size) very small conspicuous flowers and branches that are very pliable and trainable. also that carambola has been planted and dug up twice and through a bad winter. its a very hardy tree, a mango would have probably died (in fact i had one die this winter). I wonder if there is a variety of Carambola with really small fruit?

Fukien tea is almost always used as a bonai because it has small flowers and fruit and can be brought back from death if you let it dry out by accident.

my barbados cherry will be bonsai as well, another excellent candidate with beautiful small leaf size, flowers and fruit, you can google many beautiful specimens

Lychee could definitely be Bonsai, use Emperor. dwarf varieties are usually used for bonsai specimens, my boug is actually variety "pixie"

i also have a fuyu persimmon bonsai. i have a low branch on my Jaboticaba that i really want to air layer a bonsai specimen. theres also alot of pics online of Bonsai Jaboticabas as well.

Strelitzia reginae "orange bird of paradise"

Strelitzia nicolai "white bird of paradise"

seedling soursop tree my friend Eric gave to me

kampong mauve sugar apple, this tree is on its second consecutive crop first year in the ground.

Barbados cherry in bloom

Grumichama

Rainbow eucalyptus

birdhouse made from mango wood
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Muesella lasiocarpa, golden lotus banana

Musa daysacarpa

Musa Siam Ruby

Alocasia amazonica "polly"

Hi Mangokush,
Love that Musella daysacarpa and the Siam Ruby are awesome. I really like the ornamental bananas. Never knew such a nice eucalyptus even existed! That bark coloration is unreal! Great stuff!
Andrew

Andrew, that tree was 6 foot a year ago, theres some more pictures in my link below

i never knew there were such colorful trees and plants until i moved down here recently either, im building an arbor this winter to grow my hanging green jade vine. zone 9 tropicals has them cheap.

Here is a link that might be useful: my rainbow eucalyptus thread

Thanks for the nice photos. I like the siam ruby, beautiful leaves. Isn't your carambola too large to be bonsai? You said you're training it into a wind-swept form.

Bonsai is the art of recreating unique trees in nature that have overcome elements, like this bristlecone in the desert
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but to scale in a container. i suppose after a hurricane it wouldnt be hard for me to find a real windswept carambola to emulate

there are several different size categories for bonsai, being an art form there are no exact measurements, the judges usually classify them. the smallest is MAME, ive seen one growing out of an acorn shell, you hold them with two fingers. the next size is like my Fukien Tea tree, SHOHIN, this is a one handed Bonsai. KIFU would be the average size of my Bonsai on the table you hold with two hands, CHU is larger, like my Calamondin and Temple Orange. the largest, DAI generally takes more than one person to move

What a peaceful looking chill spot, love the golden and black bamboo plus the rainbow euc, that one makes me jealous.

Your bonsai collection is growing nicely, thanks for taking the time to post,

-Ethan

My dream is to create a Bonsai using this famous "Angel Oak Tree". I love the branching structure on this tree but it is the opposite of Bonsai and is more like a Giant.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://stylefrizz.com/img/angel-oak-tree-l.jpg&imgrefurl=http://stylefrizz.com/200810/easy-like-the-angel-oak-tree/&usg=__l5As7K3ZeVcJcU8dLB7w1MlSPyM=&h=564&w=850&sz=168&hl=en&start=0amp;zoom=1&tbnid=JycuaYpQImageM:&tbnh=100&tbnw=151&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dangel%2Boak%2Btree%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D895%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=106&vpy=107&dur=735&hovh=183&hovw=276&tx=152&ty=84&ei=k86eTI-XI42-sQPZoJ3WAQ&oei=k86eTI-XI42-sQPZoJ3WAQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

thats a beautiful tree, theres a park near me filled with old live oaks, its very serene.

Oak trees are not uncommon specimens, youd be surprised they adapt very well to pot culture, they are more popular in the North.

a little update

as I suspected, Carambola responds well to bondage

Ficus religiosa is starting to attach itself, it should get some new growth when the roots settle

Temple Orange

Barbados Cherry

lotus flower coming along

Nice updates mango kush! Its crazy how these plants can survive with almost all of their roots above the soil. Do you have a recommendation on where to purchase the wire you use for forming the branches?

home depot, its just regular copper wire

its common here to see strangler ficus like banyan overtake trees from 50 feet high.

Thanks mango kush. I thought copper wouldn't make good plant wire because its a good conducter of heat. Have you had any issues with the wire burning your plants when they are placed in full sun during Summer?

no i havent, its whats commonly used for bonsai. copper resists fungus, so i assume this is to some benefit as it sometimes girdles branches

I like the silver mustang in the driveway. heh.

yep. thats my older half brothers who has been "visiting" for about a year now.
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the gravel driveway is about two foot deep of compacted pea gravel. im renting a bobcat and dumping all of it on the front swale so i can park there horizontally, and the driveway which will then be a ditch will be turned into a pond, and a picket fence in front

why are some many ppl cursing about the tea plant?