Bonsai is a hobby where a lot happens slowly.

A tree can sit on the same bench for years. Branches thicken gradually. Roots improve over several repots. A design that seems obvious today may be the result of decisions made two or three seasons ago.

The problem is that I often remember the tree, but not necessarily the details.

When did I last repot it?

What soil mix did I use?

Was that branch deliberately left to grow, or did I just forget about it?

What did the tree look like before the last major prune?

There are photos somewhere on my phone. There might be a note somewhere else. Sometimes I can work it out from the date of a photo or from memory.

But over time, that gets harder.

That is one of the reasons I started building Kigi.

A bonsai has a history

Most of the apps I use every day are built around things happening quickly.

Messages arrive. Tasks get completed. Photos get posted. Information is constantly replaced by something newer.

Bonsai feels almost like the opposite.

The interesting part is often what happened six months ago, two years ago, or five years ago.

A photo of a tree today is useful.

A photo of the same tree every few months for five years tells a story.

The same is true of the work we do.

Repotting dates, pruning decisions, wiring, fertilising, pest problems, health changes and observations might seem insignificant when they happen. But when you look back over several seasons, those small records can help explain how a tree developed.

I wanted a better way to keep that history together.

Kigi is for hobbyists

I’m building Kigi primarily for bonsai hobbyists like me.

You do not need a huge collection or decades of experience before keeping track of your trees starts becoming difficult.

Even with a handful of bonsai, each one quickly develops its own history.

One was repotted last year.

Another needs wiring removed.

One is recovering from a problem.

Another has a branch that is being left to extend for a reason you hope you will still remember six months from now.

As the collection grows, so does the amount of context you are trying to keep in your head.

Kigi is meant to make that easier without making bonsai feel like administration.

Why the name Kigi?

Kigi comes from the Japanese 木々, meaning trees.

The name felt appropriate because bonsai hobbyists rarely stay with just one tree.

A collection has a habit of growing.

One tree becomes a few. A few become a bench. Before long, each of those trees has its own needs, photos, work history and plans.

That creates a practical problem: it becomes harder to remember which tree was repotted, which one was wired, which one struggled through summer, and what you were trying to achieve with each of them.

But there is another reason the name feels right to me.

A bonsai collection is more than a list of plants.

Over time, it becomes a group of trees at different stages of development, each changing at its own pace. Some might have been with you for years. Others are new projects. Some are progressing quickly while others are being deliberately left alone.

Together they form a collection, but each tree still has its own story.

That is the idea I want Kigi to reflect: many trees, with individual histories worth remembering.

I don’t want bonsai to become admin

At the same time, I do not want to spend more time recording bonsai than actually working on trees.

I have no interest in logging every watering or turning a relaxing hobby into a data-entry exercise.

For me, the useful record is much simpler.

A photo.

A date.

A short note about what happened.

Maybe a reminder about something I want to watch next season.

That is enough to answer many of the questions I find myself asking later.

The goal with Kigi is not to record everything.

It is to make it easy to keep the few things that will actually be useful in the future.

Photos are especially important

One thing I have come to appreciate more over time is how difficult it is to notice slow change.

When you see a tree every day, it can feel as though nothing is happening.

Then you find a photo from two years earlier.

The trunk is thicker.

The canopy has changed.

A branch that once looked awkward now feels natural.

The planting angle might be different.

Sometimes the progress is much larger than you realised.

And sometimes the old photo reminds you that something actually looked better before you changed it.

Both are useful.

I want Kigi to make those comparisons easier, because the visual history of a bonsai can be just as valuable as the written one.

Care advice also depends on where you live

Another reason for building Kigi comes from growing bonsai in Australia.

A lot of bonsai information online is excellent, but much of it is written around Northern Hemisphere seasons.

Advice might say to repot in March, prune in June or prepare trees for winter in October.

For someone growing in Melbourne, those dates point in completely the wrong direction.

You can translate the seasons in your head, but climate is more complicated than simply shifting everything by six months.

Melbourne conditions are different from Queensland. Tasmania is different again. A hot inland garden behaves differently from a coastal one.

Over time, I would like Kigi to make bonsai information feel more aware of those differences, particularly for growers in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere.

That is also why the Kigi website separates long-term care information into its guide library, while the blog can show what is actually happening on the bench.

The idea is still evolving

Kigi is very much something I am building as I use it.

Some ideas will probably turn out to be useful.

Others probably won’t.

The best version of the app will come from seeing which features actually help when standing in front of a tree deciding what to do next.

That is one reason I want to write about the development here as well.

Rather than only showing a finished product, I want to document some of the decisions behind it — what gets added, what gets simplified, and what I learn from using it with my own trees.

I’d like hobbyists to help shape it

Kigi is still taking shape, and I would like the people who eventually use it to influence what it becomes.

If you keep bonsai, I would genuinely like to know what you find hardest to remember about your trees.

What do you currently record?

What do you always intend to record but forget?

What information becomes useful months or years later?

And what do you wish was easier to keep track of?

Those answers are probably more valuable than simply adding more features.

Kigi should solve problems that bonsai hobbyists actually have.

What I want Kigi to become

At its simplest, I want to be able to open a tree in Kigi and understand its story.

What it looked like before.

What work was done.

What changed afterwards.

What I was thinking at the time.

And what I might need to remember next.

Not because every bonsai needs perfect documentation.

But because these trees can stay with us for a very long time.

A bonsai can be with us for decades.

During that time, phones change. Photos move between services. Notebooks disappear. Apps come and go. And our own memories become less certain.

I want Kigi to help keep one thing continuous through all of that:

the story of the tree.

Because a collection may contain many trees, but every one of them has its own history.