BonsaiList exists for one reader: the person within 30 days of their first bonsai — just gifted one, just impulse-bought one, or deciding whether to. You're worried you'll kill it. Our job is to make you capable, fast.
How it's made
Every species page is built from a structured record — watering cadence, soil mix, hardiness zones, pruning windows — and the prose is checked against that record before anything ships. When a claim can't be pinned to a number, we say so instead of rounding up to confidence. “Growers disagree on this” is a sentence we're allowed to write; being confidently wrong is not.
Everything is free to read — no paywalls, no gated content, no email walls. If we ever recommend gear through affiliate links, the disclosure will be plain and near the link: a commission doesn't change the price, and it doesn't change the picks — we'd still tell you to skip the seed kits.
What we believe
Read three pages and you should be able to tell us what we stand for. This is the list.
Beginners assume every yellow leaf is death. Most problems are watering or light, and most are recoverable. We're the calm voice, never the alarmist one.
Bonsai-from-seed is a five-year project sold as a five-week gift. We say so plainly, every time, and point to a live starter tree at the same price — even though seed-kit affiliates would pay us.
The most common beginner heartbreak is a juniper dying on a bookshelf. We never soften this to be agreeable.
No gatekeeping. If it got you into the hobby, it's a great tree. We'll help you keep it alive and show you what to try next.
Most “black thumbs” are just wrong-tree-wrong-place. Matching the tree to your light, climate, and attention span is the core service of this site.
No zen clichés. The wonder in bonsai is concrete: a tree older than you, a trunk that took ten years to thicken. We show that and skip the incense.
Wrong season, wrong climate, wrong species for your space — we'll say “don't buy this one” even on a page with a buy button. Long-term trust outearns short-term commissions.
Where to start
Spotted an error?
Wrong zone, bad advice, a species we're missing — tell us and we'll fix it. Corrections make the guide better for the next worried first-tree owner.
jake@bonsailist.com