Does it hurt?

[tomc]

Trees trained to live in a tray (or shallow pot) receive regular gentle care. A tree trained to live in a small space will not live long if it doesn't get ready and steady access to water and air at the roots.

If visiting your trees at least daily seems burdensome to you, then bonsai may not be the right pursuit for you.

Some people grow their trees exclusively from seed. Its slow going. If you are in a rush to have trees that look like they belong in the national arboratum (in Washington DC); then growing from seed may not be for you.

Don't despair there are plenty of already started woody plants available from nurseries that adapt well to bonsai training.

There are potentially even more woodies 'out there' wishing they would be conserved as bonsai. Just about every year I see landscape plants being moved for remodeling or other construction. I even have a couple of quince obtained at a last second repreive from a front end loader. If I moved better I could probably collect even more trees that way.

I like both growing from seed and by collection. They both have merit and meet my need.

Rhodies and azalea in the south are prime candidates for collection. and tolerate pot training well.

[tomc]

Back to the rhetorical question does it hurt? If you watch mythbusters on the babbel box, the answer is probably not. But does require regular pruning.

[tomc]

A few years back the American past time of putting little ceramic 'men' on pots (often called mudmen), lead to a long thread on 'another site' of building the perfect "bonsai house" of course out of lumber harvested from bonsai....

Now IMO that'd hurt, cutting down amd sawing up my baby trees.