The Complete Book of Bonsai: A Practical Guide to Its Art and Cultivation - Hardcover

Harry Tomlinson is one of Europe's leading bonsai artists and instructors. He has been both studying and practicing the principles of bonsai for almost thirty years, and is an internationally recognized authority on the subject. He has exhibited bonsai and gained awards in Britain and Japan, and has judged the bonsai section at Britain's world-famous Chelsea Flower Show. For the past thirteen years the author has been a professional bonsai artist with his own studio, and is a leading bonsai nurseryman. Greenwood Bonsai Studio, which he runs with his wife Christine, is the largest and most complete bonsai nursery in Britain.

Elvin McDonald, who wrote the Foreword, is Director of Special Projects at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Introduction

I am often asked when it was and why that I first became attached to bonsai. My earliest recollection dates back to a rainy holiday around 1950 spent visiting my aunt and uncle. I would like to be able to say that they employed a scholarly, kind, elderly Japanese gardener who entrusted me with the ancient oriental secrets of bonsai culture and set me on a path of spiritual enlightenment. However, the truth is more prosaic. Out of boredom, kept indoors by the wet weather, and being an avid and compulsive reader of everything from cereal packets to the complete works of Charles Dickens, I started on the only reading matter in the house – a set of rather decrepit encyclopedias. Luckily, the rain lasted for several days, long enough for me to complete the As and most of the Bs (for many years I was a child prodigy on any subject from A to B).

The only distinct impression I retain from this industrious study is that of bonsai. My imagination was stirred, and for weeks my parents had to contend with plant pots full of seed and saplings on windowsills all around the house. I scoured the local library for any more information about bonsai, without success. The initial interest, without further fuel, subsided.

About ten years later, I came across "The Japanese Art of Trees and Landscapes" by Yuji Yoshimura and Giovanna M. Halford (first published by Charles E. Tuttle in 1957 and still a valued work, with its thirty-first printing in 1987, this was the first major book on bonsai published in English), and the flame of my earlier interest was rekindled and I was soon addicted. As the interest in bonsai in the West grew, more and more books in English became available and I bought and studied every one. Gradually but inevitably, bonsai took over my life – to such an extent that in 1979 I resigned, after almost twenty years, my executive post in the Civil Service to devote my life to bonsai.