Your first bonsai pruning: What to cut and what to leave
Start with one shoot that has grown beyond the outline of a healthy ficus. You can tidy that shoot without reshaping the tree.
Decide whether the tree is ready
This example is for a healthy, actively growing ficus, such as Ficus microcarpa. If it just came home, is dropping leaves, or isn’t putting out new growth, wait and get its light and watering settled first. If you have a juniper, use a guide for that species before trimming; don’t copy the ficus cut.
Make one light maintenance cut
- Find a soft extension. Turn the pot until you can see one green shoot sticking past the foliage you want to keep. Trace the stem back with your eyes so you can tell it apart from the older woody branch.
- Pick a leaf to keep. On that same shoot, find a healthy leaf closer to the branch. Its attachment point is a node. Aim to keep that node and some foliage on the shoot.
- Shorten the tip. With clean, sharp snips, make a single cut just beyond that node on the tip side. Leave the leaf and its attachment point intact. Turn the pot back around and look at the outline before making any more cuts.
What to leave alone
Leave the main trunk, thick branches, roots, and healthy foliage inside the outline. If you want a branch or trunk to thicken, let its extension grow instead of repeatedly shortening it. Save structural pruning, wiring, and removing leaves for a later lesson.
First session: Take a photo before and after the cut, then stop. Keep checking the soil as usual. You can always trim another shoot later.
Further reading: Bonsai Empire’s ficus care guide.
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