Every week or so the Bonsai Assistant and I take a walk through the bonsai garden and look closely at things. What we look at mostly are plants, but we also pay attention to how the plants fit in the larger scheme of the garden, how they relate to walkways, railings and rocks. We watch how people interact with the garden space and the plants in it, taking note of what catches the visitors' interest and the comments they make as they pass through. The Bonsai Assistant spends more time in the garden than I do these days, so she keeps me up to date on conditions there, the challenges and concerns, while sharing her observations and questions. In turn I tell her what I'm seeing, while regaling her with tiresome old stories about the garden's development and the way things used to be. We talk about intended effects of specific parts of the garden, and the garden as a whole, and maintenance strategies, and plans for future developments. We monitor everything that goes on in that space.

It's the same with the bonsai that are displayed in the garden. Bonsai volunteers work on the display trees every week for hours on end — pruning, cleaning up, replacing worn out moss — doing whatever is necessary to keep them looking trim and presentable. While doing that they also look over the bonsai with a critical eye for any warning signs of health issues in the form of discolored or chewed up foliage, or any sort of disturbance or damage to the specimens. They are keen-eyed scouts! Any concerning developments they discover are relayed to me and I check them out, taking responsive action as needed. Only last week one of the volunteers noticed a certain sandblasted look to the leaves on a maple and knew from experience to check for the presence of spider mites, which were in evidence. The information was passed along, I confirmed it, and that night sprayed the infected bonsai with a miticide. The volunteers working in the garden are not solely focused on the displays, but also frequently interact with guests. They act as ambassadors for the Arboretum and answer questions, but at the same time they are taking note of what our visitors have to say about their experience of the bonsai and the garden itself. This intelligence gathering helps inform the ongoing management of the space.

Those of us who maintain the garden and the bonsai on display are the front line workers, but many others take care of business behind the scenes. The Housekeepers keep the bathrooms clean, while the Maintenance folks keep the facility operational. Campus Police are always on hand to deal with the multitude of contingencies that inevitably arise in a heavily-trafficked public place, keeping the situation safe and peaceful so visitors can better enjoy themselves. People in the Accounting department facilitate the purchasing of goods and services essential to the garden's functionality and appearance. Guest Services in coordination with the Volunteer program provide docents to work in the garden on weekends, offering hospitality and information for the public. The Adult Education program conducts seasonal tours of the garden while utilizing the space as an outdoor classroom when appropriate, elevating public awareness and understanding of our bonsai asset. The Horticulture department provides technical and logistical support of bonsai garden operations, and Arboretum management allocates resources in support of the bonsai garden as a primary feature of the institution's public identity. It takes the combined efforts of quite a few people to make the bonsai garden what it is.

And what is the Arboretum's Bonsai Exhibition Garden? There are a number of possible answers, but if you ask me, it's a show.

The main show season begins the second Saturday of May and runs through the final week of November. Hours of operation are from 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening, seven days a week, regardless of the weather. During that span of time more than one hundred thousand people see it, and millions have attended the show since it first opened in October of 2005. The audience is a critical component of any show, and our audience is not only large, it's diverse. We play to the general public, young and old from all walks of life, including many people seeing live bonsai for the first time. For some the show is a group event — something fun, curious, even magical, shared with family and friends. For others it is a solitary experience — contemplative, introspective, full of personal meaning. The bonsai themselves are the main attraction, and the garden is the stage on which the miniature trees and landscapes give their silent and stationary performance. The visitors — the show's attendees — bring to it their own thoughts and emotions, and especially their imaginations. These human attributes animate the show, making it happen. In this sense, the show is really a multitude of shows, each defined by what the individual viewer brings to the interaction.

In the bonsai world, shows happen all the time. That highly reactive interface between human beings, with their individual natures, and little designed trees, each with its own character, can be found at any bonsai show. It is inherent in the bonsai dynamic, a feature that has kept bonsai alive as a meme for more than a thousand years while the art of miniaturizing trees spread all over the world. Our show is different, though. Most bonsai shows last for a few days or maybe a week at the most, while the show in the Arboretum's bonsai garden runs for more than half a year. (The Arboretum's bonsai show actually runs year-round: The garden is open all year, and when the bonsai are removed from display in the garden for the winter another smaller display opens in the greenhouse at the Baker Exhibit Center. But display season in the garden is the big show.)

The ongoing, long-term nature of our show in the bonsai garden has produced a profound but underappreciated effect. For most bonsai growers, the portion of time their trees are on display and in the public eye is minuscule. Most of the time their bonsai are out of sight to all but a select group of family or friends, and so they are generally not being scrutinized and critically evaluated except by the grower. The grower can let the little trees overgrow or get a bit weedy and unkempt looking and it's no big deal. When it's time to enter a tree in a show they will choose one they feel looks particularly good and then spend much time preparing it for the greater level of exposure the show entails. Bonsai being readied for a short-term exhibition are fussed with to an extraordinary degree, in order that they might look as flawless as possible for their moment in the spotlight. For an example, at some of the more competitive bonsai shows in Japan trees are professionally prepared, sometimes for years beforehand, so they might be at the very pinnacle of perfection when on formal display. This is usually followed by a long period of time when the tree that had been shown is allowed to "rest." Even in the U.S. there are now bonsai trees being professionally prepared for big shows. The result of this paradigm is that bonsai displayed in shows temporarily seem to exist outside the bounds of being plants and instead become fully realized as art objects. They are unnaturally immaculate, and in their highly groomed perfection they can be very impressive. But not for long. It is an almost Cinderellaesque situation. They are plants in the end, after all, and when the clock strikes midnight and the show magic is over, they go back outside to deal with the rigors of nature and life in the food chain.

The show in the Arboretum's bonsai garden is something else entirely. Although our trees are much beloved by the visitors who come to see them, they are nonetheless scrutinized and critically evaluated every day, because they are being shown. They are indeed presented as art objects, but they grow right where they are displayed and are not viewed divorced from their natural context. Any work done to enhance their aesthetic appeal cannot be in conflict with their horticultural needs. The heightened level of their appearance must be sustainable over the course of weeks and months, while they simultaneously carry on their day-to-day existence as living plants in an environment that includes innumerable threats and hazards. It's a completely different game than a standard bonsai show, obliging the person playing it to alter the normal approach to bonsai display and think in more practicable terms. This requires a shift in the way bonsai itself is conceptualized, placing emphasis on the beauty found in the reality of the everyday, over an unsustainable illusion of perfection in a frozen moment. How bonsai are displayed affects how they are perceived, and that matters.

But you might not want to think about any of this when you walk through the bonsai garden, and I don't blame you. Those of us who work to make it happen and keep it operating smoothly can do the worrying about what it takes. Leave it to us.

You just come out when you can and enjoy the show.

The following images capture a variety of looks in the display so far this year:

Big Bonsai Show Happening Now!