Beginnings of growing bonsai trees go way back to Chinese tray scenery that started with Han dynasty 200 BC, that's about 400 years later than the great wonder of Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which was probably one of the first use of plants that was not meant for providing food.
Nowadays bonsai are still used for the same purpose, to decorate a room, house and buildings in general.
People find it amazing that small plants like these can look so grown up, scarred and shaped as old oaks.
But that is the art of bonsai.
Every young tree can be shaped and raised however the gardener want and that gives them an amazing opportunity to create art from a living thing.
Gardner's creations can be seen in bonsai exhibitions which are usually very well visited by gardening lovers.
There are many ways that bonsai can be designed in the most common ones are formal upright style also known as Chokkan with straight upright trunk, slant style (Shakan) which is very similar to formal upright style but the trunk emerges at an angle, cascade-style (Kengai) bonsai are made out of a trees that grow near water or mountains, raft-style (Netsunari) is a special style where a tree is lays on one side and all the new branches that grow on that side look like new trunks, literati style is the most monotone because these bonsai have very few branches usually having just bare trunk, forest style which has more trees in one pot, root-over-rock style has roots that grow around the rock, broom style is used with trees that have a lot of leafs, multi-trunk-style is actually a style with only one tree but many trunks showing out of the soil and growing-in-a-rock where name tells us all.
There are many different ways to start growing up a bonsai so pick your favorite and start enjoying in your own creations.