Find your bonsai

Answer a few quick questions about where the tree will live, your climate zone, and your habits — and get species matched to you.

What the finder asks you

Indoors or outdoors?: The single most consequential question, and the one most beginners get wrong. Junipers, pines, maples and most conifers need to be outdoors year-round with a real winter dormancy — kept indoors they decline over months and die. Ficus, Fukien Tea, Jade and the tropicals can live inside. Getting this wrong is not a slow disappointment; it is fatal.
What is your USDA hardiness zone?: This decides which outdoor species survive your winter. It also matters more for bonsai than for garden plants, because roots in a shallow pot are far more exposed than roots in the ground — a tree rated hardy for your zone can still lose its roots in a container without protection.
How much light does the spot get?: Full sun, bright indirect, or a dim corner. Insufficient light is the commonest way an indoor bonsai is lost, and it kills slowly enough that most owners blame something else.
How reliably will you water?: Be honest here. Some species want to dry out between waterings and rot if you are attentive; others want steady moisture and collapse if you forget a hot weekend. Matching the tree to your actual habits beats resolving to change them.

What you get back

A shortlist of species from our care library that suit those answers, each linking to a full care guide covering watering, light, soil, hardiness, pruning, pests, disease and the mistake most likely to kill that particular tree.

If you would rather browse

You can skip the questions entirely and read the species library A–Z, or start from a problem you already have and diagnose it by symptom. If you are choosing a first tree, our beginner's guide to choosing one covers the same ground in prose.