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Bonsai is a Japanese term translated as “planted in a container” or “tray cultivation”. The word “Bon” literally translates as a dish or thin bowl, while the word “Sai” translates as a tree or growing plant. Thus, “Bonsai” means ‘a tree that planted in a shallow container’. It is the art of growing trees or woody plants with tree shapes in containers. This form of art derived from ancient Chinese horticultural practises but later redeveloped under Japanese Zen Buddhism’s influence. The art of Bonsai has been around for more than a thousand years. In Japan, there are even Japan Bonsai exhibitions.
The goal of growing the Bonsai is to create a miniature-sized representation of nature as realistically as possible in the form of a tree. Bonsai trees are not genetically dwarfed plants because any species of trees can be used to grow a Bonsai. A Bonsai tree is created by preparing a specimen of the tree as the source material. It may be a seedling, cutting, or small tree of some species that might be suitable for a Bonsai development.
Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like root reduction, pruning, defoliation, and grafting to produce small trees that have the same shape and style as mature trees in their full size. The primary purpose of growing Bonsai is primarily for the pleasant exercise of effort. Bonsai is not intended to producing food, medicine, or large-sized landscapes. It focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping a tree (or more) in a small, single container. People in many countries have classified growing Bonsai plants as a relaxing hobby. They are ideal indoor plants that you can place in your home or office.
Besides just being a relaxing hobby, it turns out caring for Bonsai plants gave several benefits, both for the mind, body, and the environment around us. In this article, we will guide you through these benefits!
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1. Bonsai for aesthetically pleasing appeal
We can’t deny that bonsai plants look aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The amount of efforts needed to maintain the beauty of Bonsai indeed pays off once you’ve seen it growing beautifully. Placing them in your indoor decoration will increase your room’s aesthetic appeal and add a natural look and feel. Plus, they looked elegant as your home decoration and will make your indoors looks ‘expensive’!
2. Bonsai for stress reliever
People love to grow bonsai plants because they are a great stress reliever. By simply looking at them in your room or office, it can give you a relaxed feeling. Besides, when you focus on decorating, pruning, grafting them, you will feel your stress can lift a little. That’s also why planting Bonsai is also classified as a hobby.
3. Bonsai to cultivate patience
Because Bonsai needs proper care, fertilizing, watering, and trimming so it can thrive just like any other plants, it makes us physically active to care for them, step by step, not in an instance. That’s why people who grow Bonsai has the opportunity to develop patience and starts to work hard to make their Bonsai thrive beautifully. Surely, this skill will prove to be useful even in everyday’s life.
4. Bonsai as an air purifier
Growing Bonsai plants indoors might able to help to purify the air. It can help reduce toxins in the air, as we cannot be unsure whether the air we are breathing now has toxins and harmful to damage our lungs. One way to purify the air around is by planting Bonsai. Bonsai, like other plants, may work as a natural air purifier in our indoors, giving us fresh air every day.
5. Bonsai to promote our healthy lifestyle
By growing Bonsai, it gives us multiple benefits for our wellness. It can help to improve overall health conditions, even helping us fight cold, diseases, tiredness, and sore throat. By having Bonsai around us, we can instantly feel energized. Our mind felt refreshed around it. Having a fresh mind and body will make us healthy. Along with those benefits, Bonsai can also help give a positive psychological effect to feel mentally relaxed. Bonsai might come in miniature size, but they sure can give a huge effect, don’t they?
6. Bonsai are worth your time
Although it takes time to care for Bonsai trees, they aren’t as complex as what you might see or ever heard! They need sunlight, occasional trimming, and watering from time to time. Remember to read some tips on how to grow them if you’re still a beginner, from the cultivation technique and their cares. You need to remind yourselves to water them regularly, repotting them when they aged enough, have the required tools, fertilize them adequately, and place them at the right spot indoors so they can thrive well. However, despite the times and efforts needed to grow them, many benefits are waiting when we grow Bonsai plants so that it will be worth your time!
To grow a Bonsai tree, there are several techniques to develop them to cultivate them successfully. Below are some methods to develop the Bonsai.
- Leaf trimming. This technique of growing Bonsai is by doing a selective removal of leaves for some varieties of deciduous tree or removal of needles for coniferous trees from Bonsai’s branches and trunk.
- This technique is done by pruning the branches, trunk, and roots of the candidate tree.
- Wiring. This technique is done by wiring the branches and trunks of the Bonsai to allow the planter to create the desired form of the tree and make detailed placements of the branches and leaves
- Clamping. This technique is done by using mechanical devices to shape trunks and branches of the Bonsai tree.
- Grafting. This technique is done by grafting new growing material of the Bonsai tree (like the bud, branch, or root) into an area on the trunk or under the tree’s bark.
- Defoliation. This technique is done by providing short-term dwarfing of foliage for certain deciduous trees.
