How to get past making mistakes?

Also
@Smoke had a great suggestion. The exact number is not important, but he suggested getting 25 or so inexpensive one gallon size junipers, or trident maples or what ever species of tree you want to learn. Lets assume junipers. Go through and pick a front, and wire a design into each of them. Then when time is right, transplant each of them into a inexpensive bonsai pot. (plastic bonsai pot is okay, this is an exercise). Then for 2 or 3 years follow up with pruning and re-wiring when needed. Keep them numbered so you know which one was your first and last. You will probably see a difference between number one and number 25. This is the sort of practice one needs to gain confidence. Just do it.

Most of us, do this exercise one or two trees a year over the course of many years. If you want to learn bonsai in less time, do this exercise 25 trees at a time. An repeat as often as you feel necessary until you feel confident.

What to do with all those practice trees? Obviously the best one or two from each group you keep. The rest you can sell, give away, or compost. The beauty of picking up nursery stock, is it is mass produced stock. It really does not matter how you dispose of the no longer wanted stock. You can also plant unwanted stock in a grow out bed, and let time perhaps develop new and more interesting character. I have a juniper that for 15 years has been kicking around my back yard, in a plastic bonsai pot. Every 2 or 3 years I will jin (that is strip bark off a branch to kill the branch, create a deadwood feature, or cut off straight boring branches, then return the tree to the yard, and forget about it. Its is finally starting to get interesting. Lots of deadwood stubs that used to be straight boring branches, lots of twists and turns. It might finally look good in a bonsai pot.

Just some fellow newbie advice re: knocking off buds and other clumsy mishaps (been there ...). When I finally built myself a turntable, I found it way easier to observe a tree, get my scissors or cutters in at a good angle and make less mistakes. I also find myself getting a tree up to do some work, and spending the whole session just turning, looking and thinking without making a single cut.
I simply removed the seat off an old (free) barstool and attached a wood piece for the top. Highly recommend!

I wish I could tell you how many trees I've killed. If you snap a branch or knock off a bud, do what I do. Scream into the wind once, then shrug your shoulders and move on. There will be plenty of other buds and twigs on lots of other trees before you die. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. There will also be plenty of other, different mistakes. Don't be discouraged, it's all part of the learning curve. Stay active on this site. I don't have any bonsai clubs near me and I certainly can't afford to have a professional come to my house, so all I've learned has been from the good folks here at Bonsai Nut. Granted, my learning curve has been longer than most, but I love this so much that I keep plugging away, and am starting to get some decent results. This is my 7th season doing this, so yes, it takes a long time. My best advice? Don't be too hasty to make changes in your tree. Stop fiddling with your trees; do a little something then leave it alone until next year. Take it slow and keep them alive first. Learn who the knowledgable ones are here are and heed their advice. All the best.

PS, wearing a thong (panty) like some (one) of our more esteemed (male) members doesn't necessarily help your bonsai, but it may make you feel better. Every little bit helps.

Man, thank you to all of you for the advice! It's motivating to hear each take on what to do. I guess the nature of bonsai is if you mess it up, it is what it is. I feel like I need to learn to stop messing with my trees and leave them be. Or maybe just buy more trees and work on multiple at a time as @Leo in N E Illinois said lol. I also like the point @Wires_Guy_wires said on attachment, I feel like that is something all beginners should learn to know.

This forum really serves as a wealth of information for the beginner. I feel motivated to keep going and learn as I pursue this hobby further, regardless of how many mistakes I make and how many trees die. Everyone had great suggestions so I thank you all.

In regard to a club, I have a club local to me. How do you actively seek help among club members or to try and find a mentor? I've been to meetings but its general bonsai discussion ahead of my skill level. At club meetings, as a beginner, what do you think is the best way to get involved while also learning the basics (something almost everyone there seems to know lol). There are no beginner workshops of that sort, so I generally just take notes and pay attention.

Ask the person with the nicest trees for help at your club. It's very likely that that person will try to help you.
Some knowledge can only be gained with experience, I'm a horticulturist by heart and mind, but it took me a couple dead pines to understand them. I think it works the same way for most plants, and almost everybody in bonsai knows this.
If discussions are out of your skill level, then I suggest using those discussions to ramp up your skill level. Ask for arguments, ask for reasoning.
"So you're saying you do repots in summer, can you explain why this is better in your view?" Stuff like that. Sometimes the answer raises more questions, and all of a sudden you're part of the discussion.

All those people started somewhere close to where you are. They'll understand.
And, if there's a chieftain or something, you can always ask for a moment to present your own tree and ask for feedback at a club meeting through that person. I think they'll be happy to help, but you might need some thick skin; some of the critics are very good at critique.

I wish I'd studied with a professional when I began. It has certainly made the biggest impact to improve confidence. If you decide this is something you really want to spend your years pursuing, I'd recommend it. This will provide the biggest change in the smallest timeframe.

Join your local club. Become a fixture there. Ask lots of questions. Find the person with the best trees of the kind you're interested in and ask them lots of questions. Offer to help them do the things you're comfortable with. That might be pulling weeds. That might be removing wire. You're going to have to come up with your own ideas here.

Attend exhibitions. Take time to study the trees. Kneel. Peer around to the back. Look at how the wire is wound, ...particularly in areas where the branching is complicated. Look closely for signs of techniques you've been studying. Often, the owner of the tree will be close at hand, particularly if you've been hovering around his tree for a while. Ask lots of questions.

Study. There are only a handful of books available that don't simply rehash whats already in all the other books. Ideally, by this point in the list, a beginner bonsai book won't be of much benefit. (Some) Magazines have good information usually. If nothing else, they usually have progressions. On that note, there are often progression threads here @ bN as well. While you're here, seek out advice (directly or indirectly) from folks who are producing trees that you'd be proud of. Also, get books from the large shows in Japan, Europe, and the US. Really study the trees. It takes a bit more working when you're studying from a photograph. Once you've figured out how the trunk and branches play off each other ...and why it succeeds (or doesn't?), study the pots. Then the stands. Then the display as a whole. The idea is to fill your head with the highest quality images of bonsai you can find.

Now that you've seen the highest quality you can physically get in front of (by attending exhibitions) or in a book, you've got another iteration of studying to do to figure out HOW those trees got there. You've just increased your standards. Now "up your game". The problem there is that it will reveal the mistakes you were making ...that you didn't even recognize were mistakes. Once you stop making those mistakes, your standards will increase, you'll work on improving again, ...and you'll realize you were making other mistakes that you didn't realize. Its iterative.

In all of the above, it SHOULD be implied, but I've come across several that don't get it so I'll also state the biggest factor: Be Teachable. Nobody knows it all, and nobody started out knowing it all ...so you're not going to impress anyone by projecting that you "know this" ...when you clearly don't.

Just be teachable.


(Then be selective in who you're taught by.)

Bonsai clubs are all over the map in terms of their quality. I'm lucky enough to be equal driving distance to 2 very active, very helpful clubs. I use Milwaukee as my home base because one of their senior members, I had seen photos of his trees in magazines and books, Jack Douthitt. I've been lucky enough to learn things from Jack for the last 15 years.

Back in the 1990's, I went to a club show, I won't name, in a state about 350 miles from me. The trees were remarkably mediocre. At a table there was a blow hard pontificating on trees. I asked about a particularly puzzling "Best in Show" tree, because it was awful compared to what I'd seen in Chicago and Milwaukee. The blowhard proudly announced it was his tree, and he was the "teacher" for all the club members. Then I did a second quick tour and realized the whole group was being held back by "the blowhard". One of the vendors I new saw the look on my face and said something to the effect that the reign of the pompous one won't last. Fast forward 10 years, I happened to be in town when their show was on again. This time the trees in the show were wonderful. There had been a fairly large turn over of members, and in particular the "blowhard" was nowhere to be seen. The club now had a much younger club president, (40's) and they even had contracted a Japanese trained young professional as their club sensei. Fantastic improvement.

So the above example is both the good and the bad of bonsai clubs. All in one club.

If you are shy and feel awkward just talking to someone without an introduction, one of the best ways to break the ice at a club, is to volunteer to help. Show up early and help set up chairs, Or hang out late and help tear down. Do this at club meetings or at club shows. Often there is a hospitality table, with coffee or snacks, bring something, hang out at the table. Eventually if you make it to 3 meetings in a row, someone will talk to you. And once the ice is broken, get right on to the main topic, trees.

Keep making mistakes until you run out of mistakes to make. Though it varies from person to person (its not a contest) it is the only valid answer to the ops question.

I think the simple answer to this is you throw a (quiet mental) fit then shrug and move on.
Keep it alive and keep on trucking.

canadianlights said:

On my journey making some bonsai, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Pruning off branches that I shouldn't have, knocking off a bud at a place I wanted a branch by accident, damaging/breaking off a branch while wiring, cutting the roots too far etc etc.

Especially today, my tree was back budding a lot, and I was getting a bud in the perfect spot. But alas, it got knocked off when I tried to inspect it closer. As a beginner, it gets really demotivating sometimes, and the nature of bonsai makes it punishing when you make mistakes because you can never predict how the tree will respond and change.

How do you guys get past the fear of making mistakes as a beginner? I would truly appreciate the advice, as every choice I make is always so hesitant. It could be a tiny branch, and I'll be fearful of cutting it in the case that I'll live to regret it. Watching people like Peter Chan amaze me since they have no fear when they prune and repot, and aren't afraid to sometimes be rough with the tree.

Click to expand...

At some point along the bonsai journey you have a Tom Cruise "RIsky Business" moment and say "What the F" and go ahead and do things, like drastically hacking away at roots, removing limbs, chopping (and GASP, not even considering an airlayering option--which is mostly for timid souls)...That WTF moment, however, takes years to arrive at, watching and working with OTHER bonsai professionals IN PERSON helps take down the fear several notches. Nothing like watching someone who's been at this for 20+ years take a saw to the bottom two thirds of a maple rootball and just cut it off...or chop off the overgrown apex on a "finished" bonsai to begin replacing it with a more suitable apex

The best way I've found to get past mistakes is to go burn a big fat one.
Afterwards it may not even seem like it was a mistake.
But then again smoking a big fat one before messing with the trees may have been what led up to the mistake in the first place.

M. Frary said:

The best way I've found to get past mistakes is to go burn a big fat one.
Afterwards it may not even seem like it was a mistake.
But then again smoking a big fat one before messing with the trees may have been what led up to the mistake in the first place.

Click to expand...

Also.
They're making trees every day.
If you screw one up get another.
Also if you think you've screwed a tree up,seet it aside,let it grow for a while and see if it presents a different way to proceed.
And a little bit of advice that I like to impart is that a little neglect goes a long way in bonsai.

M. Frary said:

The best way I've found to get past mistakes is to go burn a big fat one.
Afterwards it may not even seem like it was a mistake.
But then again smoking a big fat one before messing with the trees may have been what led up to the mistake in the first place.

Click to expand...

"That's the difference, I think between dopers and drunks. The drunk will go out after a hard night of drinking; do some dumb things; wake up the next day and go 'boy, that was stupid!'. The doper doesn't do that, he wakes up and STILL thinks it was a good idea!"

-Kenny 'Von Dutch' Howard

It's more important to learn from mistakes than it is to not make them at all.

"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."

A. Gorilla said:

"That's the difference, I think between dopers and drunks. The drunk will go out after a hard night of drinking; do some dumb things; wake up the next day and go 'boy, that was stupid!'. The doper doesn't do that, he wakes up and STILL thinks it was a good idea!"

-Kenny 'Von Dutch' Howard

Click to expand...

It seems to me that you should take a puff or two.
Maybe get your mind right for once.

Holding grudges between threads, eh? Oh, c'mon. It's the topic I feel strongly about, not you.