Beginner
Your first tree, or your first year with a nursery plant you want to turn into one.
12 itemsRoughly £100 to £290, our estimate: check the shop.
Bonsai needs fewer tools than the shops suggest and better ones than the cheapest kit. This list is everything a first year asks for and nothing it does not: cut, wire, repot, feed, water.
Buy the shears and the concave cutter well; they last decades. Everything else can be modest. The book is not optional.
In the order to buy them
Bonsai shears (long-handled, stainless)
Most of what you cut in a year is twigs and shoots; these do that cleanly and reach inside the canopy.
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Long handles and short blades, stainless or carbon steel that will take an edge, a spring-free scissor action. Avoid tiny 'gift set' shears: the handles are too short to reach into a canopy.
Concave branch cutter
The one cut secateurs cannot make: a branch removed flush so the wound heals into the trunk.
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A forged head that closes cleanly, 180 to 210 mm for most trees. The concave bite leaves a hollow that heals flush; ordinary secateurs leave a stub that scars.
Anodised aluminium wire, 1 to 4 mm
Aluminium forgives a beginner: easy to put on, easy to take off before it bites. 1.5, 2 and 3 mm cover a first tree.
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Anodised brown aluminium in 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 and 4 mm; 100 g or 500 g reels. Easy to apply and remove; use a gauge about a third of the branch's thickness.
Bonsai wire cutter
Wire comes off by cutting it, never unwinding; the right cutter does it without bruising the bark.
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A short-nosed cutter that bites wire flush against bark without crushing it. Electricians' snips work for aluminium but not safely for copper on a branch.
Akadama (hard, medium grade)
With the pumice, a mix that drains in a wet winter and still holds enough water for a hot week.
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Hard-fired, medium grain (about 3 to 6 mm), double-line brand or similar. Soft akadama breaks down in a wet winter; sieve the dust out before use.
Pumice (3 to 6 mm)
The half of the mix that never breaks down.
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Sieved horticultural pumice; holds air and some water, does not break down. The backbone of any mix where winters are wet.
Drainage mesh and tie-in wire
Every repot needs drainage mesh and tie-in wire; have them before the day.
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Plastic mesh sheet for the drainage holes and 1.5 to 2 mm aluminium to tie the tree in. Both are cheap and both are necessary at every repot.
Bamboo chopsticks (plain)
For working soil into the roots and for telling you when the pot is dry.
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Plain, untreated bamboo. For working soil into a root ball without air pockets, and as a moisture gauge left in the pot.
Plastic training pot
A tree in development belongs in a deep, cheap pot. The ceramic one comes later.
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A deep, oval or rectangular plastic pot with big drainage holes; mica or terracotta-coloured. For the years before the tree earns a ceramic pot.
Slow-release organic fertiliser pellets
Trees in a small pot eat what you give them. Organic pellets are slow and forgiving.
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A balanced organic pellet (fish or seaweed based) in baskets on the soil, topped up through the growing season; a low-nitrogen autumn feed for conifers.
Fine-rose watering can or mist sprayer
A fine rose stops you washing the soil out of the pot.
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A long-necked can with a fine rose so the soil is not washed out, or a pump mister for moss and new leaves.
Bonsai Masterclass (Peter Chan)
A practical first book. Read it before you cut anything.
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Plain and practical; the one book to read first.