Why Are Bonsai Pots Shallow

Informal upright bonsai trees are most often planted in oval pots and formal upright trees in rectangular pots.

Why are bonsai pots shallow. For cascade and semi cascade bonsai the impression is one of a mountainside. The bonsai pot helps keep bonsai trees small the magic behind why a bonsai tree stays small is in the pot. The total retained amount of water is less for a coarser soil. For bonsai designed to appear to be trees in a normal landscape setting the shallow pot produces in the brain the impression of a broad expanse of land.

A coarser soil will have a lower shallow column or layer of saturated soil than a finer mix. However not all bonsai containers are shallow. This helps create the illusion that the tree is not what it is namely just a potted plant. The bunjin style needs a round pot which in most cases is quite shallow and small and can be irregularly shaped looking primitive called nanban pots.

To accommodate the cascading plant and indeed display its cascade to the best advantage kengai containers need height. Formal upright larch in a formal rectangular pot at the noelanders trophy 2013. Water can be removed from this saturated layer. As you would have seen bonsai pots are all absolutely tiny in relation to the tree in terms of length width and being extremely shallow.

Bonsai pots are shallow and it s this shallow ness that keeps the tree growing slowly and small. That pot is severely slowing the growth of that tree. The deeper or more shallow the pot the more the effect.