Bountiful Bonsai: Create Instant Indoor Container Gardens with Edible Fruits, Herbs and Flowers

by Richard W. Bender

Bonsai--the Japanese art of training plants to form elegant sculptures--is an age-old craft that appeals to gardeners and non-gardeners alike. Bountiful Bonsai presents a radical, new approach that applies bonsai techniques to everyday container gardening, instantly turning houseplants and herbs into beautiful and unusual bonsai sculptures!Bonsai expert Richard Bender not only expects his plants to look good but also expects to yield pleasant fragrances, fresh herbs and fruits for his table. He shows readers how to create "instant bonsai" by shaping a range of common houseplants, Fragrant hibiscus and jasmineKitchen herbs such as rosemary and thyme Luscious fruits like cherries and oranges Medicinals such as tea tree and camphor laurel This beautifully illustrated volume provides all the information you need to get started, from plant choice advice to care requirements and bonsai "carving" tips. Suitable for indoor gardening, or shaping exquisite bonsai fruit trees for outside gardens, Bender turns a finicky art into a hobby accessible to all. Bonsai have graced Japanese homes for centuries; now they can yield useful crops that will simultaneously satisfy your artistic sensibility and also provide some wonderful meals!

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Cooking, Art

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 8, 2014

About the author

Richard W. Bender(1953- )was born in St. Louis, MO and grew up in an Ozark rural lifestyle yet with a very large high school less than one hour from downtown St. Louis. The combination of a rural life connected to nature and the cultural advantages of the large high school and city provided a unique perspective that is reflected in his writings for several newspapers and magazines including Horticulture, Field & Stream and The Herbal Companion. After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife Management and two years in neuroscience grad school he move to Colorado in 1985 where he operated Bonsai By Bender for more than 20 years, supplying unique bonsai to clients like the Missouri Botanic Gardens, Franklin Park Conservatory(Columbus, OH,) Portland(OR) Classical Chinese Garden and the COMO Park Conservatory in St. Paul, MN. His first book, Herbal Bonsai was in print for 15 years and his newest book, Bountiful Bonsai was released on January 13, 2015. Richard is currently working on several new projects with his agent including a Craft Winemaking book for Story Publishing.

Reviews

[Teal Veyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I checked it out from my city library, but there was so much great information in here that I'm thinking of buying myself a copy. There are sections in here I know I'll want to reference again and again.

I'm super new to indoor gardening, and I haven't even started my first bonsai yet (unless you count the half-submerged avocado pit sitting on my mantle! I stuck three toothpicks in it and found a vase, after reading the section on avocado bonsai in this book. Fingers crossed it sprouts! I know it won't produce fruit indoors, but it will still be cool to have a pretty little tree I grew myself). This book made me feel like bonsai is something I could do. I have a wooly thyme plant and this book says that thyme can be trained into bonsai. Really, there were just so many options for edible bonsai in this book. My mind is running wild with all my different options :)

The guy who wrote this clearly loves bonsai and growing his own food. There was so much passion on every page. It was contagious.

Loved the unique perspective the author brings to bonsai. He's doing his own thing, growing tiny fruit trees indoors. It's awesome :)

[Kai Metcalfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great encouragement for me in Northern Colorado. Lots of great photographs and details on individual tree and plant species. It was worth the read for the photos and descriptions alone for me. I think it was a fun and inspiring introduction to bonsai, but I didn't feel like I got a solid "how-to."

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has made a bit of a niche for himself as someone who seeks to combine an appreciation for the traditional arts of bonsai from Chinese and Japanese Buddhism with American impatience and a desire for productivity.  This happens to be the second book of his that I have read and I appreciate his focus on edible gardening [1].  To be sure, there are likely many readers who would be able to take the author up on his suggestions of how to combine an appreciation for harvests with an aesthetic appreciation of bonsai, and though there are some tradeoffs here, the author is honest about those tradeoffs and ambitious in seeking to provide a place for an expansion of interest in the art of bonsai in a way that serves a sustainable interest in people growing food and herbs for themselves to enjoy.  If it is likely to be a considerable length of time before I am involved in any such efforts myself, at least this is the sort of book whose approach I can definitely appreciate.

This book of slightly more than 100 pages is a pretty quick and easy read.  The author begins with an overview of bonsai as an art including its history and how it became popular in the United States thanks to the Karate Kid series (1).  After that, the author gives some discussion about how one can create instant bonsai, mostly through buying bonsai-ready plants at nurseries or salvaging plants that would otherwise be targeted for destruction outside (2).  The third and largest chapter contains the author's discussion of various edible trees and herbs that are suitable for medium to large bonsai creations, including a wide variety of fruits, herbs like basil and thyme, all organized alphabetically by their common names (3).  Many of these discussions include pictures as well as the author giving some idea of the water requirements and yields and how one can best prune such trees to keep them smallish as well as bountiful in an indoors environment.  After this the author gives some tips on how one can find future bonsai, mostly through buying seeds sight unseen or taking an interest in local nurseries (4).  Finally, the author discusses how to care for bonsai on a long-term basis (5) as well as enjoy the bountiful harvest that can result from training bonsai herbs and trees that provide an edible and useful harvest (6).

Over and over again the author brings up the fact that he lives in Colorado and has been able to grow, indoors, a large variety of tropical and subtropical edible bonsai arrangements.  One wonders how much room he has in his house to have so many plants, and to reflect on the tragedy that took place when wildfires damaged or destroyed many of the trees that appear in this book.  By and large, though, despite those concerns, this book was quite an enjoyable one to read.  I do not know how popular bonsai is for gardeners, since I tend to see it only in Japanese or Chinese gardens, but the combination of aesthetically pleasing as well as agriculturally productive fruit trees and herbs is appealing for someone who grew up in a family where growing fruits and gardening were definite interests.  Perhaps someday I will engage in the same efforts myself, time and conditions permitting.  Books like this are a pleasure to read as someone who enjoys beautiful trees and who also has a fine taste in enjoying tasty food, and it appears the author combines these interests as well.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid, informative read that serves as a great primer on growing unconventional bonsai. Really loved the casual inclusion of recipes towards the end and made me feel confident enough to perhaps begin growing my own edible bonsai down the road.

[Clyde R. Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable little book. While not strictly a "bonsai" book (more of a growing edible houseplants), it is never the less well written and an easy read. It is also useful in helping to get ideas what species will grow indoors and how to care for them.

[Jill]

Easy enjoyable read that is meant to get you excited about trying edible bonsai. Works for me! I'm keen to give it a go.

[San Diego Book Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Gretchen for San Diego Book Review

Bonsai, the traditional art form of growing miniature trees in pots, produces exquisitely beautiful plants that many people would love to use to decorate their homes; unfortunately, traditional bonsai are not suitable for indoors. However, Richard W. Bender proposes a different approach to bonsai that is – and is productive and fruitful besides.

"Bountiful Bonsai: Create Instant Indoor Container Gardens with Edible Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers" collects the author's extensive bonsai and container gardening wisdom and experience to teach you that you can decorate in a bonsai style and also harvest delicious fruits and herbs, from fruiting trees you can treat as houseplants.
You can read this entire review and others like it at San Diego Book Review.

[Umang Bhatt]

- Can not give the rating to this book because a lot of plants that this book talks about do not grow naturally in India. So, I won't be using this information.
- Has got specific details on a lot of type of plants. Does not teach bonsai techniques as such (in my view).
- This does not count in 12 books to read this year.