Where to buy Bonsai in Mauritius

There are several places where you can buy either a bonsai/pre-bonsai or bonsai stock materials in Mauritius.
You can also get several side materials such as bonsai soil components, pots, tools.

There are some stuffs that I have not been able to find locally though, the most important ones being bonsai wires, bonsai specific tools (jin pliers or knob cutters ) and lime sulphur solution. Those does not prevent you              from doing basic bonsai stuffs, but its difficult to do some specific advanced bonsai techniques.

Almost everything else or acceptable substitutes can be found on the market in nurseries or supermarkets.
I've listed the places that I have visited, but there are other places and nurseries all around the Island, just keep your eyes open.

I'll be using some straight forward terms here, such as bonsai stock material, pre-bonsai material, bonsai, mallsai, training pot, bonsai pot, soil component. I'm detailing what those terms means at the end of the article in the section "Glossary".

Also those are info gathered over a 4 year span, so some info may be outdated.

Vaneron Garden Center

Marbella Rd, Trianon, Quatre Bornes, Mauritius
Phone : 466 7108
Email : vaneron@intnet.mu
Website : http://vaneron.com/

That's the best place to get some real quality bonsai material to nearly finished bonsai materials. They also have a huge variety of plants and trees to choose from. They also have quality bonsai pots glazed and unglazed, thought the size and shapes and colors varies with their stocks.

What you can obtain there:

• Prebonsai materials [ Wide variety ]
• Bonsai materials [ Wide variety ]
• Bonsai
• Training pots
• Bonsai pots
• Gardening soil [ not for bonsai use though, I use it mixed with perlite for training purposes ]
• Perlite
• Pine bark
• Cocopeat
• Sphagnum moss [ Small and HUGE amount available to purchase]
• Pesticides / Insecticides / Herbicides
• Fertilizers

Tiny part of the huge collection of Bonsai materials availabe at Vaneron Garden

Serre de Palma

Felico Ave., Palma Rd., Quatre-Bornes

Phone : 427 6375

They are the main supplier of perlite and other mass market agriculture products that you will find in supermarkets [ Way, Intermart, Super-U etc ]. They also bring in privet mallsai, chinese elm mallsai and ficus mallsai from time to time.

What you can obtain there:

• Prebonsai materials
• Mallsai
• Training pots
• Bonsai pots
• Gardening soil
• Perlite
• Pine bark
• Cocopeat

Medine Nursery

Located at Bambous.

Phone : 401 6000
Email : pepiniere@medine.com

It has a HUGE amount of plants. I did not found any bonsai there, but you'll get loads of bonsai stock material to pre-bonsai materials.

Government Forestry Service

I'm afraid I don't have the contact details for those.
The new government website seem to have move it somewhere that I cannot find easily.
Anyway, there is one Forestry nursery at Curepipe, route du Jardin.
There are two or three others at various locations on the Island.

Its rather small and the opening hours are... well government opening hours...
Its open on Saturday from 09hr up till 10hr I think. [ Will update when I get more info ]
It is rather small but you will normally obtain plants specific to your climate area over there.

You will only find bonsai stock material to pre-bonsai materials over there [if you know what to look for]
Another reason why I like this nursery is because it is CHEAPER compared to other nurseries.

Other Places

There are loads of other places, but those will mostly contain bonsai stock material  ex : Espace Jardin, Exotica nursery, some sellers at markets, plant exhibitions, even on the road.
Don't limit yourself to those places I've placed above.
Those are the places closest to me transport wise.
Espace Jardin in the North had some interesting materials last time I went there but due to transport issue I could not buy what I wanted.

Bonsai tools that I have not yet found in Mauritius but there are alternatives!

Bonsai wires
Usually you would use either annealed copper wire or anodised aluminium wires for bonsai wiring.
You won't find those on the market.

What you will find is everyday use wires in supermarkets like Shoprite in the gardening section or electrical section, Mr Bricolage, Espace Maison and Hardware store (Quincaillerie).
Those include fencing wires, electrical wires, gardening wires etc.

Fencing wires 1.77mm and 3mm wires.
FORGET about the 3mm wires, they are too hard for bonsai use.
The 1.77mm is flexible enough and strong enough for creating ramificaiton.

I've given those wires a try at wiring my trees but several wires are too hard to bend around the tree/branches and end up harming the bark of the tree when you use them.
Other wires such as electrical wires can easily bend but have a very poor hold on the branches but you can give it a try if you want to.


Bonsai cutters etc
I  have not found dedicated bonsai tools [ cutters, shears, pliers ] on the Mauritian market, but there are lots of substitutes in hypermarkets and Hardware stores (Quincaillerie).


Carving tools
You can get power carving tools at Shoprite in the electrical section.

You can also get manual carving tools at various locations in the island.
There are even cheap sets for students.

Glossary:

Bonsai Stock material 

Basically a normal nursery plant.

It has bonsai potential, but it has not been trained into a bonsai.

Those are relatively cheap starting from Rs 10 for very young plants up to Rs 450 for an established plant.
Prices may go up depending on the plant's rarity or difficulty to propagate.

Juniper "Bedfordiana" according to Forestry nursery.
Apparently a Juniper Virginiana from my research.

Ficus Benjamina Variegata Plant - Bought
from a plant exhibition

Pinus Elliottii saplings from Forestry nursery

NOTE : Be very careful at Plant exhibitions. Some buyers/sellers will sell pre-bonsai materials as bonsai at very high price. I've already written an article on this here "False bonsai in Mauritius"

Those are still saplings and young trees.

Again sapling and young trees placed in a small
container and overpriced to be sold as a bonsai.

Pre-Bonsai material 

Plant with some training or currently in training.
By training I mean work has been done to some extend on the tree.
Ex

• work on the root mass to make it more compact, 
• creating the nebari, 
• thickening the trunk
• creating the ramification.

A mallsai could also be a bonsai material - see mallsai below.
Prices here will start to skyrocket very fast.
So price range would start as from Rs 500 for small size materials and may go as high as Rs 7500 or more for a bigger size material.

Bonsai Material Clerodendrum Smi - Vaneron Garden

This is a mallsai from Serre de Palma.
It looks ok, but in fact there was no developped  root system,
no nebari, no ramification [ its mainly trunk and primary branches ].
Another sign that its not in a very good health was the fact that the leaves
were only at the tip of the branches and falling off regularly.

From experience, price will start as from Rs 700 upwards for small size bonsai.
And roughtly from Rs 3000 upwards for medium to larger size bonsai.
The closer you buy to the source / importer, the lower the price - Ex if you buy directly from Vaneron garden or from Serre de Palma.
If you buy from a reseller the price will vary.
For example:
Serre de Palma was selling those mallsai all over the island at one time.
At Serre de Palma the price was Rs650 to Rs700 [ depending on species ]
Same type was also being sold in Indian Oil Filling stations, price there was Rs 850
At some plant exhibitions same type was being sold at Rs 950. Selling slogan "Rare dan moris sa madam, dernier plante ki reste la." :)
Same period of time they were also selling it at Espace Jardin, complexe Shoprite. Price was Rs 2000 there, and that particular plant was nearly dead from the looks of it.

Bonsai

Note the absence of the word "material" here. This make a huge difference for me.
If I buy a "bonsai" but end up having to re-train the whole root system, re-train the nebari, re-train the ramifications etc, then in the end I just bought a "bonsai material".
Buying a real bonsai would mean that the only major work that needs to be done [ for quite some time ] is keeping the ramification in check on and off and periodical root pruning when repotting.
So far I have not seen a lot of those.
There are a few that match that description of a bonsai at Vaneron Garden, but you will have to pay close attention.
A real bonsai is never finished, but the base should be established.
Due to lack of real information on bonsai in Mauritius, if you are not careful, you will be paying for what the tree MIGHT become instead of paying for what the tree is worth.
To put it into a local context:
1 boite la farine Rs175, ek en boite la farine zot kapav fer en gato marriaze ki coute Rs 4500.
Si ki pe ariv, c ki ena dimoun pou van en boite la farine Rs 4500 are ou ek dir ou, nek petri la farine la ek met dans four, lerla ou ava gainne en gato marriaze.

Mem zafer ici. En tipti plant ki coute Rs 250 kapav vinn en bonsai ki coute Rs 4500.
Mais bizin ki plante la in travail li pour ki li vinn en bonsai, sinon li na pas vo sa gro prix la.

So just be careful.

Mallsai
Mallsai are mass produced "Bonsai Materials" that's usually sold in supermarkets and malls.
Those are usually made from ficus, ligustrum [privet] or chinese elm.
Mallsai could be a good starting material for a beginner, but in most cases mallsai will have :

• poor root system to a nearly no-existent root system
• bad cuts or scars on its trunk
• Wire bites
• No nebari [ trunk just comes out of the soil ]
• The wrong potting soil - Usually plain garden soil that gets too compact overtime or clay like soil.

Mallsai from Serre de Palma

Same tree as above - Close up of a bad scar.
This is typical of mallsai.

Note : Ginseng mallsai in supermarkets.

Ficus plant "Gréffé" sold at a super market.
Up to you if you want to buy this or not,
but I find the price tag a bit too high.

You can buy those Ginseng mallsai in supermarkets [ like Jumbo ] or some plant exhibitions.

Even if I would not invest money into those plants, I realize that to some people this is a bonsai.

If you really, really want to invest Rs 850 [ was Rs 700 initially, last time I checked it was now Rs 850 ] into those plants [ yes "P L A N T S" - There's nothing bonsai about it so far ], then I would strongly suggest that you repot those plants into the ground for 1 year and let it grow freely for that one year.

Keeping them in those pots will take ages to thicken up.

Here are some tutorials on how to tackle those Ginseng "bonsai".