Seedling
A seed the size of a lentil.
Every tree here starts in a seed tray in February. Two small leaves, a thread of stem and a lot of waiting. Most of the craft is deciding which ones are worth the next twenty years.
Bonsai nursery Hampshire
Small trees, long patience.
We grow, wire and style bonsai on a sheltered hillside near Alresford. Scroll, and watch one grow from a seed.
Scroll to rewind the years
01 How a tree is made
How a tree is made
Trunk
Thickness first.
The trunk is grown fat in the ground or in a big training pot, and left a little wild. A bonsai trunk cannot be thickened later, so we are patient and let it run.
Wiring
The wire asks, the tree answers.
Copper and aluminium wire coils along trunk and branches so we can bend a young tree into the shape of an old one. It comes off after a season, before the bark scars.
Pruning
What you remove matters most.
Water shoots come out, the foliage is thinned into clouds, and light reaches the inner branches again. Two careful cuts a year are worth twenty hurried ones.
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02 Your turn
Choose a tree.
Then choose a season.
The tree regrows and recolours as you choose. Each species has its own shape, bark and way of turning the year.
Species
Season
- Tree
- Japanese maple
- Latin
- Acer palmatum
- Now
- Autumn: vermilion
Drag the scene to turn the tree
03 The display
The display
Unwired
The wire comes off.
When the branches hold their line, the wire is cut away piece by piece. What is left looks as if the tree had always grown that way, and the bark heals over the marks in a season.
Dusk
Lit by one lantern.
A bonsai is meant to be seen low and slow, with something quiet behind it. We show ours on a stone slab over raked gravel, with a lantern and not much else.
On show
Placed, then left alone.
Choose a tree at the nursery or let us style one for you. Either way it leaves in a padded crate with a care card in plain English, and our number for the first winter.
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04 Trees, repotting and workshops
Take one home. Or learn to make your own.
Trees
- Japanese mapleeight years, in a glazed pot£145
- Flowering cherrysix years, buds set£195
- Black pinefifteen years, wired£420
- Shimpaku junipertwenty years, deadwood£680
- Seedling and a potstart your own£28
Repotting
- Smallpots up to 20 cm£35
- Mediumpots 20 to 35 cm£55
- Largeover 35 cm, two of us£95
- Collect and returnwithin 20 miles+£15
Fresh akadama, pumice and lava rock mix included. Best done in spring for most species.
Workshops
- Wire and shapean evening, two hours£45
- Pruning clinicbring your own tree£35
- Autumn display morningslabs, stands and lanterns£60
- Saturday styling daysix hours, lunch included£120
Eight places a session. Your tree and all tools provided.
05 The small print
Slow work, done properly.
- Trees in the nursery
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- from seedlings to a few that predate the war
- Oldest tree
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- a Scots pine, not for sale, always happy to be visited
- Workshops a year
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- never more than eight people at once
- Growing since
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- started with one tray of maple seed in a shed
06 Visit
Come and see the trees.
Browse the benches, ask anything, and book a workshop if you fancy having a go. Nothing on this page is bookable, it is a concept.
- Find us
- Wickham Down Lane
near Alresford, Hampshire - Open
- Wed to Sat 10 to 4
Sun 11 to 3. Closed Mon and Tue - Speak to us
- 01632 960 481
hello@kuro-bonsai.example
Thank you. We will check the diary and write back within two days. Bring a coat, the hillside is breezy.