By Mark Passerrello
This is a rather small book in mostly black and white written in 1996. I found it at the Village Bookstore in Linworth for $6. I had previously checked this book out from the Library because it had dealt with rosemary as bonsai. I had seen an outstanding rosemary bonsai at the Cleveland home and flower show and thought…I’d like to try that!

This is the book that references the “new popularity” of bonsai in the United States after the Karate Kid movies. Bender, the author who was raised in St. Louis Mo., points out that we want pines, junipers, maples elms and holly, but they grow very slowly and out doors. Herbs offer a faster time scale. Some can be created in one season. And some, like rosemary, grow in a twisted gnarled manner without wiring. He suggests that this makes herbs a good media for teaching newcomers to bonsai.

About one half of the plants that Bender lists are shrubs; such as, sweet bay laurel, olive, pomegranate and rosemary. Herbaceous plants include tyme, lavender, oregano, sage and scented geraniums. Bender points out that tyme are difficult to transplant and geraniums are easy. I can attest to both facts as being true.

Bender suggests starting with a larger specimen, 1-3 gallon, due to their relative low cost and instant bonsai potential. Since many herbs are shrubs you may end up with a multi trunk bonsai. Wire will cut into herbs more quickly than normal bonsai as they grow more rapidly. Also, he warns that since some are prostate growers you may need to keep them from lying in the dirt. Field grown specimens can quickly become weedy. Many herbs thrive in alkaline soil. However salt build up can harm them, this includes fertilizer burn. Watch for brown leaf tips.

Field grown specimens should be repotted in the fall when the weather has cooled and growth has slowed. (The author lives in Fort Collins, Co. – so this advice should be OK) Since herbs are tender this will need to be before the first frost kills or damages them. While some herbal bonsai have high water requirements, Mediterranean herbs, such as lavender, rosemary and tyme, prefer well drained soil mixes. The author who grew up working in his parents greenhouse business in St. Louis Mo. is also a fan of adding good topsoil or some of the soil the plant was growing in – into the mix when repotting. And he advises to water the day before repotting to stimulate root growth. While repotting he says that you should spray the roots often to keep them from drying out. He also warns that you should only try to repot one tree at a time and to get your pot ready before you expose the roots. The pot you select should be deeper than one for traditional bonsai. As with bonsai trees, some patience needs to be exercised, gradually reshaping the root ball. Rosemaries in particular benefit from using an intermediate pot before placing it in a bonsai pot.

Indoors herbs need bright light. If you grow them in a window – he suggests any but north facing (I have a rosemary in our south facing window, but it gets shade from a tree in the afternoon.) If you use lights, he says to place them 4-6” below a fluorescent, or 5-6’ below a 150 watt gro-spotlight. He says these are good for about 3 square feet. To encourage flowering the length of the day needs to be extended and shortened for resting periods. Indoor herbal bonsai also benefit if the nighttime temperatures are 10-15 degrees cooler than their days.

When watering Bender suggests dunking the pot, at a minimum he suggests watering twice to make sure they are thoroughly watered. He says that you may be able to go 3-4 days between watering, unless they are pot bound.

The closing chapters discuss the use of rocks and ground covers in your bonsai pots. In the Afterword, Bender tells us about a “transcendental event that changed his life”. He reports that while he was at a bonsai show, he saw a Japanese bonsai master gazing intently into a saikai elm grove; tears were flowing down his cheeks. This is a moment in the art of bonsai that is so hard to tell a non-bonsai enthusiast – you have achieved that look of nature that you have strived for so long. Truly a labor of love ~ Ken Schultz

Late winter can be a tough time for a bonsai hobbyist. There is only so much that can be done with the indoor trees, the outdoor stuff is still outdoors, asleep, so there is time to fill and bonsai seems like the best way to fill it. It is a great time to read up and check out the library, but the only draw back is that if you have been in the hobby very long you have gotten familiar with every book and probably know most of them by heart.
While at the library recently I took a peek in the bonsai section, as I usually do, just to see what's on the shelf. I found a book I had not run across before, and though I was excited to see a new book, after I had read it I was actually sorry I did. The book is called Herbal Bonsai by Richard W Bender. Subtitled "Practicing the Ancient Art with Fast Growing Herbs", I was prepared to support Mr. Bender wholeheartedly. His basic premise, that many herbs will make very attractive bonsai is to my mind absolutely correct. As he points out, herbs are widely available and very hardy. They can put up with the adverse conditions otherwise known as bonsai culture and often times thrive while doing it. They often grow much more quickly than true trees so will make convincing bonsai fairly quickly, which is often a large consideration for a first timer styling up their first bonsai. The price of herbal material is often much less than specialized plants produced by bonsai nurseries.
Bender mentions more than once the herbs are not well thought of as bonsai material. That assertion is only partly true. Though not usually mentioned in the same breath as black pine, cryptomeria and Japanese maple, herbs are used as bonsai, and as more than just as an oddity. I will grant him that herbs are not as common in the hobby as they could or should be. When I first brought a myrtle bonsai to our show, another member struggled to identify it and wondered if it was a Kyoto serissa (the leaves are fairly similar) Do a Google image search for topics like "myrtle bonsai", "thyme bonsai" or "rosemary bonsai" you will get a few hits, and some of the examples might be simple seedling jammed in a pot type bonsai, but there are also some real show stoppers being made with these types of plants.
So where does the book go wrong? Basically it is an example of a good idea and good intentions not always adding up to good results. Bender is an adequate writer but does not always seem to have a good grasp on the nuts and bolts of bonsai or horticulture in general. This short, one hundred page book lightly skims most points a bonsai book should cover. This information has been covered more adeptly and in much better fashion in any number of other books. Even the specific information that Bender would supposedly be expert in, care and training of the various herb species is given short shrift.
The book has surprisingly few illustrations, most of which are photographs of plants that one assumes Bender has trained. Each seems to violate many of the rules about what is "Good" or acceptable bonsai: pots are to large and too deep, foliage is rank and wild and grown into one large mass rather than defined clouds or pads, accent plants , ground coverings and especially decorative rocks are overused extravagantly. They hardly seem like the work of someone who has been in the hobby two decades.
In short, though the subject is an interesting one, this is a book that does it no justice.