When I first started bonsai, I mostly recorded the obvious things.

I took photos when a tree looked good.

I remembered the big jobs.

I assumed I would remember why I made certain decisions.

Most of the time, I didn’t.

The longer I keep bonsai, the more I realise that the small details often become more valuable than the dramatic ones.

A repotting date.

A photo before pruning.

A note about why one branch was left to grow.

The soil mix I used.

Where the tree was sitting during summer.

At the time, these things can feel too minor to record.

A year or two later, they are often exactly what I wish I knew.

Here are seven things I wish I had recorded more consistently from the beginning.

1. Photos before I did anything

It is easy to remember to take a photo after styling or pruning.

The tree looks cleaner. The work is finished. It feels worth documenting.

But the photo I often wish I had is the one from before I started.

Without it, it can be surprisingly difficult to judge how much actually changed.

A before photo shows the structure that was removed, how dense the foliage was, where a branch originally sat, or how the silhouette has changed over time.

It also gives you a more honest record.

Sometimes a tree improves.

Sometimes a decision does not work as well as you hoped.

Being able to look back at both is useful.

If I could start again, I would take a quick photo before almost every significant piece of work.

It does not need to be a perfect photograph.

It just needs to exist.

2. When I actually repotted each tree

I used to think I would remember this.

“This one was definitely repotted last year.”

Or was it two years ago?

Once you have more than a few trees, those dates start blending together surprisingly quickly.

The repotting date matters because it provides context for a lot of later decisions.

How long has the tree been in this soil?

How established should the roots be?

Is it reasonable to disturb it again this season?

Has drainage changed faster than expected?

A simple date can answer a lot of those questions.

I would also record a short note about the roots while the tree is out of the pot.

Were they dense?

Healthy?

Weak?

Circling?

Was there a lot of fine root close to the trunk?

That information is difficult to recover once the tree is back in the pot.

3. The soil mix I used

This is another thing that feels obvious at the time.

You mix the soil, repot the tree, and assume you will remember what went into it.

Then a couple of seasons pass.

Now you are looking at two similar trees that dry at completely different speeds and trying to remember whether one had more pumice, more akadama, finer particles, or something else entirely.

The exact recipe does not always matter.

What matters is being able to connect the mix to what happened afterwards.

Did it stay open?

Did it hold too much water?

Did it dry too quickly in summer?

Did the roots grow well through it?

That turns a soil choice from a guess into something you can actually learn from.

4. Why I left a branch alone

This might be the one I underestimate most.

Sometimes a branch is deliberately left long to thicken the trunk.

Sometimes it is being used to build taper.

Sometimes it is filling a gap.

Sometimes it is simply not ready to be worked yet.

Months later, that intention is easy to forget.

Then you look at the tree and wonder why that branch is still there.

Without the original context, it can be tempting to “fix” something that was actually part of a longer plan.

A short note such as:

“Leave this branch until next spring to thicken the lower trunk.”

can save a lot of confusion later.

Bonsai decisions often make more sense when you remember what the tree was supposed to be doing next.

5. When wire went on

Wire has a habit of becoming invisible.

You put it on, look at the tree for weeks, and eventually stop noticing it.

Then growth accelerates.

By the time you see the wire again, it may already be starting to bite.

I wish I had been more consistent about recording when wiring was applied, especially on faster-growing trees.

The date alone does not tell you exactly when to remove it.

Species, season and growth rate still matter.

But it gives you a useful reminder to inspect the tree.

I would also record what I wired.

“Primary branches wired” is much more useful later than simply writing “wired tree.”

6. Problems when they first appeared

When a tree develops a problem, I usually pay a lot of attention to it.

What I did not always record was when I first noticed it.

That first observation can be extremely useful.

When did the leaves start changing?

Was the tree already weak before the heatwave?

Did the problem begin before or after repotting?

Was it moved to a different position around the same time?

Did I change watering or fertilising?

Looking back, the sequence often matters more than the individual symptom.

I do not want to turn every yellow leaf into a medical record.

But for anything unusual or persistent, I now think it is worth keeping a short note and a photo.

7. What I was trying to achieve

This is probably the most important one.

It is easy to record what you did.

“Pruned.”

“Wired.”

“Repotted.”

But those words do not explain why.

What was the goal?

To improve taper?

Shorten a branch?

Build ramification?

Strengthen a weak area?

Change the planting angle?

Let the tree recover?

Sometimes the best decision is to do nothing at all.

Years later, the intention behind the work can be much more useful than the work itself.

A tree develops slowly enough that many decisions only make sense when you can see what came before and what you were hoping would happen next.

I don’t think everything needs to be recorded

The lesson I have taken from all of this is not that bonsai needs more admin.

I still do not want to log every watering, every leaf, or every small change.

That would make the hobby less enjoyable for me.

What I want is enough history to help my future self understand the tree.

A few photos.

Important dates.

Short notes.

The reason behind a decision.

That is usually enough.

This is part of why I’m building Kigi

These are exactly the kinds of details that led me to start building Kigi.

Not because bonsai needs another place to enter data.

But because a tree can stay with you for years or decades, while the information around it gets scattered across phones, photo libraries, notebooks and memory.

As a bonsai collection grows, that problem grows with it.

I want Kigi to make it easy to keep the useful parts of a tree’s history together without turning the hobby into paperwork.

The aim is simple:

record less, but remember more.

And if I could give my earlier bonsai-growing self one piece of advice, it would probably be this:

Take the photo. Write the date. Leave yourself a short note about why.

You may not need it today.

But there is a good chance you will be grateful for it later.