Bonsai Empire

Bonsai Empire is an educational platform to promote the art of bonsai and help especially beginners to appreciate the art of bonsai, and keep their trees alive and thriving. It started as simple website in the Netherlands in December 2000 and has grown to be highly regarded worldwide as the number one online source for quality bonsai information.

Begun and still facilitated by Oscar Jonker, over the years many teachers and artists from the community helped to create what has become a platform for bonsai education. Originally designed in the Dutch language and then switched to English, the website is currently available in 12 languages and receives over a million monthly visits. Bonsai Empire is among a small number of websites that are using contemporary media to help spread the know-how gained by a young generation of bonsai artists who served formal and lengthy apprenticeships in Japan. Over 400 videos are on Bonsai Empire's YouTube channel with some 325K subscribers. It has over 32,000 users on its website Forum. There are some 127K followers on its Instagram account, and 212K followers on its Facebook page.

The website maintains a library of a few hundred articles contributed by a number of teachers around the world on tree care, styling, cultivation, and popular species used, as well as a global directory of clubs, shops, potters, and gardens. Several on-line video courses are also available here.

Since 2017 there has also been a Japanese website, to motivate beginners to get into bonsai, www.bonsaiempire.jp. A documentary film about Tokoname ware potters was shot in the Fall of 2019 and already has 266,000 views.