A note from Lonnie Bowling, who built this

Creating Yoi Bonsai is my best attempt to contribute to this amazing hobby and art form that has given me so much…

I've been a software developer for my entire working career, several decades now, most of that time writing systems for large enterprises. I've also been studying, growing, and creating bonsai for over 20 years. Yoi Bonsai is my attempt to take what I've learned in that lifetime of work and put it toward something I actually care about.

I've been working on this app for nearly a decade. This "app" started as a personal project for keeping track of my own trees: first on paper, then spreadsheets, and eventually as software. The version you're using now has been in development for close to a year. It wasn't built in a weekend; it's the accumulated answer to problems I kept running into as a learner.

This is a seriously advanced application. It has cloud infrastructure, real-time messaging, two full versions for Android and iPhone users, and a website for the marketplace. All secure and extremely fast. I have spent great effort to make this easy to use, but at the same time, very advanced. It is set up to take advantage of AI in the future, but that is not what it is about. AI has its place here, but it is not the story. We are the story.

A few of those problems shaped features that I don't think exist anywhere else in our space right now:

• Tree lineage that travels with the tree. Provenance and training history that move when the tree moves, from collector to teacher to student to buyer. The history of a bonsai is part of its value, and most platforms throw that history away the moment the tree changes hands.
• A genuinely free marketplace. Ichiba takes zero fees. Buyers and sellers connect directly. No take rate, no promoted listings, no algorithmic surfacing.
• AI that helps you spend less time on your phone. It is early for AI, but what we do with it matters: AI is here to handle the recordkeeping load so you can be present with your trees, not scrolling.
• Real tree-sharing between people. Students and teachers, collectors and friends, with shared access to the same tree records and permissions that make sense.

If this is useful, I hope you'll support it. Yoi Bonsai can flourish if the community wants it to, but the support has to be earned. The app has to actually help. If it doesn't, tell me, and I'll fix it.

Finally, this isn't about money or profit or selling your data to advertisers. It's my best attempt to use the skills I've spent a lifetime building to contribute, in some small way, to a hobby and an art that's given me a lot.

If you try it and like something, or don't like something, please tell me. That's how this becomes better.

Lonnie Bowling