Author’s note: Saturday, May 10 is World Bonsai Day (more information here). It is a red-letter day for The North Carolina Arboretum because that’s when we are committed to having the full compliment of bonsai back out on display in the Bonsai Exhibition Garden. The bonsai garden is a premier attraction for the Arboretum, so having that attraction back online after a five month winter hiatus is a big deal. For me, World Bonsai Day is a deadline that can’t be missed. All those wonderful little trees and landscapes don’t get dressed up and lined out on the display benches by themselves — it’s a lot of work! I like the work, but the time factor involved can result in a bit of pressure. I’ve written about it before (here, here, and here), so I’ll not take the time to write about it again now. Instead, what follows are brief accounts of three bonsai in the Arboretum’s collection, relying more on pictures than words to tell the stories.

Elf Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia ‘Elf’) To see mountain laurel growing in the wild is an invitation to speculation that one of our favorite native shrubs is a prime candidate for bonsai use. However, to think of them that way is a mistake. Their naturally gnarly growth habit might suggest that all you need to do is grow mountain laurel in a pot and it will make a bonsai, but in truth they always disappoint when any attempt to cultivate them that way is made. All the same, we have a mountain laurel in our bonsai collection. Ours is a cultivated variety called ‘Elf’, so named because it has a dwarf habit — small in stature, small in leaf, small in flower. The ‘Elf’ mountain laurel we have was originally planted in the Arboretum landscape. It was dug up after a few years because it underperformed and, because I can’t help myself, I rescued it from the compost pile. It is not a great bonsai except for a week or two every spring when it puts on a big display of flowers. That display usually coincides with the opening of a new display season in the bonsai garden, so the specimen is usually out for World Bonsai Day. This year it will not be because it flowered early and is now past its prime time showiness.

Here is how our mountain laurel looked on display in years past:

Here is this year’s floral display as it looked last week, before the flowers began to fade:

White Haw (Crataegus punctatum) Our hawthorn bonsai is another native species and another plant rescued from the compost pile. In this case the plant actually made it to the pile and lived there for some time before being discovered and salvaged. After being grown from seed until it became a good-sized little tree in a nursery pot, the decision was made that there was no place in the landscape to plant this hawthorn. It was chopped off near its base and dumped out of its pot onto the compost heap to be recycled back into organic matter for future garden soil amending. Only this plucky plant refused to die, instead sending roots down into the rich pile while sending new sprouts up from the remains of its stump. That was the condition of the hawthorn when I found it. Recognizing that the new form of the tree had possibilities for bonsai use, I gathered it up and reintroduced it to a pot. After several years of working with the stump sprouts to shape them into individual trunks, I put the whole arrangement into a bonsai pot:

Here is an in-the-round view of the hawthorn, made some six or seven years after being given a second chance at life:

The following year the salvaged white haw made its bonsai garden debut:

Eventually this specimen was transplanted from the imported bonsai pot to a natural limestone slab that I hauled out of the woods in central Tennessee. In the ensuing years our white haw has become a regular presence in the bonsai garden, mostly in the earlier part of the viewing season. Hawthorns seem to be favored by pests, making it difficult to keep the foliage clean as the year goes on. This tree has pretty flowers, but they are always done before World Bonsai Day. It produces fruit, as well, but the fruit is green and not particularly showy. I am always more focused on the shape of the specimen than I am on trying to preserve the fruit display, so that aspect of this bonsai is not usually a factor. The shape of the multi-trunked hawthorn has not changed much over time, although it has improved in terms of ramification. This specimen has been developed to be displayable from two opposite sides, as seen in the following images:

I have something of a sentimental soft spot for this bonsai because of its history. Its physical form is testimony to the tenacity of living creatures in their determination to stay alive. In my view, the part of the tree that most bears witness to this struggle is the winning feature of this specimen:

Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica) This specimen is probably being shortchanged by this thumbnail sketch account, but I expect it will appear again in a future entry more focused on naturalistic design. The naturalistic design process requires more thorough explanation than time will allow right now. Our parrotia came to us as a donation, a pre-bonsai that had some degree of trunk development and the start of a conventional bonsai branch arrangement. I removed it from the small plastic pot it was in and transplanted it into a big wooden box, then let it grow for awhile. The first picture available shows the tree after several years of unrestricted growth in the box:

Right from the start, there was no intention to have this parrotia look like a conventional bonsai. I wanted it to look like a natural tree. Every year I would remove parts of what the plant produced, sometimes by use of pruning tools and sometimes by simply breaking off select larger branches. There was never any design plan beyond responding to what the tree did in response to what I had done previously to it. It was a kind of ongoing conversation in that sense, wherein the tree would do something then I would do something then the tree would do something, and by and by a form started to emerge. This has become my favorite way of designing little trees.

In 2020, with its wooden box starting to fall apart, the parrotia was transplanted into an oversize ceramic stoneware container. From there the inter-species conversation continued and intensified as the years passed:

In 2024, as the form of this tree began to define itself, the specimen was planted in a higher quality container made by American potter Byron Myrick. The parrotia, like the hawthorn discussed previously and like most all of the Arboretum’s more recently developed bonsai, has been designed to be displayable from more than one perspective. In the two images below, the blue flagging tape indicates the specimen was repotted in 2024 and the orange tape reminds us that the specimen requires monitoring for eventual removal of training wire: