Pinus Sylvestris

Hi. I was just thinking about something. I like bonsai, but I also like them to grow a bit more than they do..
I have some ficus' and a chinese pepper tree etc, but they dont do so good here in cold Norway. The thing is that I was adviced to get some native trees instead. I was encouraged to look for Pinus Sylvestris here, and I have been taking a look around. I havent found any trees yet that I would like to dig up, but Im sure it will come soon. And then save them for spring. But the thing is.. Arent they wery slow growers? I heard that if a Pinus was as high as up to your knee, it could be said to be about 4 years old.. Then the trunk would be really thin, and the branches spread. I love working with trees, but I dont want to have them for 40 years before its starting to look like a bonsai.. I was on a short trip the other day, checking out a new tree that has been growing. I was about 2 inches long when the snow had melted. Now I guess its about 2.1 inches..
Any suggestions what to do?

Hi Storm. You're quite right about wanting to look for more established trees - you're wasting your time on seedlings for the very reason you state. So, you have two options:

Option One: find a bonsai nursery in Norway and get a decent bit of raw material to work on. The chances are it's been collected from somewhere. At the very least it will already be several years older than what you have seen on your searches. This is how a large number of us increased our collections. I try to stay away from Garden Centres as their stock is not much thicker than stuff you can collect already.

Option Two: Keep looking. It will become a sort of Holy Grail and it's very much a question of knowing where to look and the benefit I have over here is that several others have already done the hard search part and all I need to do is tag along behind them. I don't know if you have come across Harry Harrington's Bonsai4me website - on it is an article about collecting pines in Norway. Here is the address if you have not already found it.
http://www.bonsai4me.com/AdvTech/ATcollectingpinesnorway.htm

There must be someone else on this forum from Norway so hopefuly they will come on and contribute some advice.

Hope you have some luck

Pines are relatively slow to develop, especially if you start with young stock. You need to find somewhere that you can get permission to dig up a tree, preferably one that has been deer grazed, avalanched, snow weighted, trampled by hikers, stunted in a peat bog or otherwise forced to grow shorter and more suited to bonsaiing. This only provides you with a tree that has a ready developed trunk though, as it often takes three or more years before it is properly established and growing well enough so that you can safely work on a collected pine.

Update; I found that you can get in touch with the guy in the bonsai4me article through a blog he runs with a couple of other Norwegian bonsai friends. It is as: http://norwegianbonsai.blogspot.com/

Magnificent!
Thanks for all help, its much appriciated! I will read about it now.
Needle trees are my favourite, they are so elegant and nice. I just think I have to learn how to be more patient!