Knowledge of Bonsai

Enrique Castaño

Enrique Castaño practices bonsai in his home country of Mexico. As a second generation bonsai artist he was introduced to the art of bonsai as a normal part of everyday life. His love for nature lead him to study biology and he obtained his Ph.D in 1997 from Rochester University followed by postdoctoral positions in Harvard and in the UK, which were valued opportunities for him to observe the work of well known artists and, more importantly, to see many different aspects of nature. The only problem has been that every time he acquired a collection of trees, he moved to a different part of the world. Since he returned to Mexico in 2002, he restarted a new collection and begun teaching the art in Mexico, so the trees he shows there now are just a few years old (well from the bonsai point of view anyhow). He has a few award winning bonsai and he serves as an adviser for the Latin-American golden Award Prize in the China Penjing Contest. he started the group of tropical bonsai in Mexico which he has been president of for the last few years and he does seminars and demos around Mexico. He hopes that his new book "Botany for Bonsai, the Science Behind the Art" will be of help to both novice and experts alike.