I Blog About Blogs
This week, I present the long-awaited fourth installment of the Best Blogs for Gardeners, focusing on sites that cover specialized methods of pruning.
Although Bonsai Tree Gardener is also a retailer, it provides a wealth of knowledge, and regular articles on caring for your Bonsai, gardening design, and even creating wire-frame Bonsai sculptures. The best place to start for beginners is their "Care" section, which offers advice on watering, pruning, and reviving your plant; once you have more experience, you can delve into more specialized techniques such as "How to Split a Bonsai Trunk (May 4, 2019)". The "Bonsai Trees" tab suggests some commonly used species for Bonsai, as well as different types you can explore. If you don't want to start from scratch, you can purchase one of the many fine offerings on their site.
If you're crazy about Bonsai, one of your first stops should be Bonsai Nut, which has one of the most active Bonsai forums around, boasting 49,495 message threads since its founding. Although not technically a blog, the amount of knowledge, and resources provided by its devoted members is astounding; if you need to know anything about care, watering, pruning, planting, lighting, et cetera, you will more than likely find it with a simple search of the forums. There is also an extremely active photo gallery, which will provide you with an endless amount of ideas, and techniques you can try.
If you've ever wanted to turn a bush, vine, or other type of plant into a horse (or just want to buy one), you will want to check out Topiary Tree.net; bad news though on the live animal topiaries- the nursery requires a minimum purchase of $4,000 to $5,000....Although the link for the blog was buried at the bottom of the home page, there are numerous articles that will provide a good start for any aspiring Topiary artist, such as "How to Add Ivy Foliage to a Topiary Frame (March 28, 2020)", "How to Add Live Foliage to a Topiary Frame (March 28, 2020)", and "How to Determine the Wire Gauge for a Framed Topiary (July 13, 2019)"- see "How-Tos".
For the aficionado of Boxwood, Yew, and Holly, the European Boxwood and Topiary Society is the place to be. The website, and blog offers a wealth of articles on great gardens to explore, issues affecting plants, as well as great tips for caring for your plants, and designing your topiaries. The Society is also the publisher of Topiarius, which is an excellent resource for design ideas; some articles from their archives are available online for your perusal. To subscribe, you can become a member of the society for approximately $35 U.S. Dollars. One of the best resources to check out initially is Time 4 Topiary, a summary of all their "best articles from the website and...annual magazine Topiarus ".
Niwaki is the online, and brick and mortar store of enthusiast, Jake Hobson, author of one of the best english-language guides to the Japanese art of shaping the "garden tree"- Pruning, Training, and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way. Unfortunately, the blog section is not updated too often, but it does offer some tips, and potential ideas for your garden- check out "Pottering Around Nurseries (August 23, 2018)", "Kiyosumi Garden (February 28, 2019)", and "Armchair Olympic Travel Guide". For additional suggestions, and inspiration on the art of Niwaki, I would recommend checking out this online collection- Pinterest- Niwaki, as well.
Espalier is defined by Oxford Languages as "a fruit tree or ornamental shrub whose branches are trained to grow flat against a wall, supported on a lattice or a framework of stakes". The art proved to be too exotic to have its own blog (at least from my research), and to learn more about it, I recommend exploring the collection of websites by Nick McCullough, APLD found here.
Hopefully, you have found some inspiration for your next gardening project; my next series of articles will cover blogs for the aspiring artist. Don't forget to share content on Social Media with the buttons at the top of the article, if you find something interesting. Thanks again for reading!