Bonsai Book Review #5

This week I will have a look at –

Collingridge Handbook of Bonsai, the - by, Anne Swinton

This book was given to me as a gift from a family member who spotted it in a charity shop. The first edition of this book dates back to 1982, so this is a slight problem to begin with, but only in that some of the techniques may be outdated by today’s practices. The book is of a decent size, and is crammed full of page after page of useful information. This book unlike others relies less on imagery and more on text. This is not to say it has no pictures, because it does have a number of colour photos illustrating various different bonsai. Where techniques are discussed the author has chose to use more diagrams than photos to help explain this point. This is not a problem at all though, as the diagrams are easy to follow and pleasing to look at. Spread, seemingly randomly, throughout the book are examples of the authors bonsai trees, complete with a description. The description of each includes their origins, styling choices, growth characteristics, and their dimensions also. With the description of each there is also a photo to accompany this. Whilst the styling progression is discussed, it might have been useful to include perhaps some earlier pictures of the tree, so the viewer could see the visual progression themselves.

There is a useful section which gives a rough month by month annual guide to caring for bonsai. This discusses what techniques are generally undertaken at specific times of year and to what species this is done. This can be a useful guide, especially to beginners, however care must be taken in simply following it, as considerations should be made to differing climates, and species. The book includes the usual plant glossary at the back which looks at suitable species for use as bonsai, however this again take a text format as opposed to using pictures or photos. As I already mentioned the fact the readers climate may differ from the authors, this is dealt with at the back of the book, in terms of over-wintering. The author discusses different scenarios of how to help over-winter bonsai depending on different climates. This is a helpful addition to make the book accessible to more people.

In summary, this book is very good, it is more of a “reading” book as opposed to a instruction manual, that said, I found it very enjoyable to reads through and took many new ideas from it. For the price that was paid, as a second-hand book there was not really much that could go wrong, and so it takes pride of place on my bonsai book shelf.