There are many different plants which can be used for bonsai gardening. Bamboos, pines and birches are good trees to use.

Bamboos (Bambusa) are among the finest of the grasses for bonsai. There are numerous kinds of bamboo. Dwarf ones and those of medium size easily make fine bonsai. One can dwarf a tall bamboo by peeling off the sheaths while the very young shoots are just coming up; a sheath may be taken off every day or less often according to the hardness and growth of the young cane.

If the upper part of a bamboo cane is cut off in early summer or midsummer, when it is approximately full-grown, it will become densely foliaged the next year and be better-looking.

Finished Bonsai
"Where can we get them?" will be the cry to the commercial Japanese bonsai fancier and to the American fancier from those who are seeking the much-valued finished bonsai. However, such bonsai can be maintained in perfect condition or at a high standard only by a professional bonsaiman of long experience or a fancier who has developed real skill with bonsai for long years.

One who has secured these bonsai by accident or by luck will be bothered and will find himself incessantly busy, trying to maintain them in perfect condition. Of course, anyone with sufficient interest (and fair skill in plant culture), can learn to grow, train and maintain bonsai of merit.

Plants to Begin With
There is a vast field of plants with which one may pioneer in bonsai gardening or with which one may play, in the spirit of an amateur. There are, I think, numerous materials suitable for bonsai in the nurseries and on the mountains in America.

If one only gathers a handful of seeds in the woods or somewhere, he can raise many nice bonsai in the course of a few years. Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), birches (Betula), beeches (Fagus), pines (Pinus), tupelo, or sour gum (Nyssa syl-vatica), sweet gum (Liquidambar), spruce (Picea), larch (Larix), Douglas-fir (Pseu-dotsuga), and many American trees provide plenty of seeds to start with; or seedlings may be taken from the natural habitats in a way that will not damage the forest constitution.

I recall "California Jottings" by the Viscountess Byng of Vimy in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her most interesting article she tells us: "Walking is an incomprehensible thing to the average American, and to their way of thinking you walk either because you have not got a car or because you are a mildly mental case." However, I have hope, because walking is now becoming more acceptable among many sections of the population.

Now if you walk in the mountains, you will occasionally find naturally dwarfed trees near mountain paths, on the cliffs of rocky coasts, ravines, and mountains, and on the peaks of mountains where eternal winds rule. These will be good materials to start with.

There can be no better way to talk about bonsai gardening than through the following poem:

"Give me to fashion a thing; Give me to shape and mould; I have found out the song I can sing, I am happy, delivered, and bold." -Laurence Binyon