Beginnings
Bonsai is a strange business, to begin with. It takes a tree, an object that is almost always larger than us, and represents it in a form that is almost always smaller than us. It takes a living entity that is literally rooted in the earth and removes it from that context, placing it instead within the confines of a container. It carefully sustains the life of the plant in question but completely alters the construct of its existence, causing it to be a dependent rather than independent being. It substitutes, in large part at least, ideals of human design for the random acts of nature, in developing the plant to a certain desired appearance. And to accomplish all this requires a great deal of time and effort on the part of the human who wants to do it.
Why go through the trouble?
Bonsai, as most people know, originated in the East. The practice most likely began in China, under a different name, and was subsequently carried into Japanese culture sometime around the 6th century, CE. The Japanese assimilated the art form and over time reinterpreted it, renamed it bonsai, and eventually disseminated it to the rest of the world. Many cultural artifacts came into being independently, sometimes simultaneously, in both Eastern and Western culture before the two met and began to blend. Bonsai was not one of them. The closest parallel in Western culture might be topiary, but other than the common need for pruning in order to do either the two are not very much alike. There was no horticultural practice developed independently in the West that was the equivalent of bonsai in the East.
Why was bonsai exclusively Eastern in its origins, and why has it successfully spread to the rest of the world and become a global phenomenon?
The North Carolina Arboretum, when it began as an idea back in the 1980s, was conceived as an institution dedicated to the celebration and interpretation of Southern Appalachian flora and culture. Not surprisingly, in the original planning, there was no call for the Arboretum to have a bonsai program or to feature a bonsai collection in a garden specifically designed for bonsai display. Today bonsai is firmly established as a key element of the Arboretum’s identity, a favorite attraction to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come here every year. Not only that, but the Arboretum has carved out its own bonsai niche, widely recognized as something different from the way bonsai is typically presented elsewhere in the United States, and consciously devoted to a regional identity.
How did this come to happen, and exactly how is bonsai different at The North Carolina Arboretum?
Astute readers will note that questions are being posed here for which no answers are given. This is so because the answers all require context to be fully appreciated, and the context cannot be quickly or easily provided. Bonsai is largely a matter of time. Time, not in the sense of an impressive number, as in how many years old is this tree here or that tree there, but time as in what it takes to see, feel, absorb, learn, and finally understand. It will take time to explain about bonsai at The North Carolina Arboretum, and how it came to be the way it is. Over time, the Curator provides the answers.
Every month we will provide a thematic seasonal focus to frame the conversation. Each monthly theme will feature an introductory essay and suggested resources to take you further. Most importantly, we will be sharing ongoing live journal posts from Arthur Joura. Some live journal posts will be long and others will be more brief, some will be mostly words and others mostly pictures, some will be close-up studies of detail and others will step back to take in the wider scene. The path will not be linear, but all the entries will be steps along a journey.
The journey begins here. You’re invited to come along.