Welcome to BonsaiTraining.com. Here you will find much Bonsai info. Let’s start with some history:

Container-grown plants, including trees as well as other plants, have a history stretching back at least to the early times of Egyptian culture. Pictorial records from around 4000 BCE show trees growing in containers cut into rock. Pharaoh Ramesses III donated gardens consisting of potted olives, date palms, and other plants to hundreds of temples. Pre-Common-Era India used container-grown trees for medicine and food.

The word penzai first appeared in writing in China during the Jin Dynasty, in the period 265CE – 420CE. Over time, the practice developed into new forms in various parts of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Notably, container-grown trees were popularized in Japan during China’s Tang Dynasty, a period of cultural growth when the Japanese experienced and adopted their own versions of many mainland practices. At first, the Japanese used miniaturized trees grown in containers to decorate their homes and gardens. During the Tokugawa period, landscape gardening attained new importance. Cultivation of plants such as azalea and maples became a pastime of the wealthy. Growing dwarf plants in containers was also popular. At this time, the term for dwarf potted trees was “a tree in a pot”. The c.1300 rhymed prose essay, Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden, by the Japanese Zen monk Kokan Shiren, outlines aesthetic principles for bonsai, bonseki and garden architecture itself.

The oldest known living bonsai trees are in the collection at Happo-en (a private garden and exclusive restaurant) in Tokyo, Japan, where bonsai are between 400 to 800 years old.