Most folks don’t know Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana). One reason for this is that the tree has a very restricted range, naturally occurring only in some scattered parts of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Carolina hemlock is sometimes found in cultivated landscapes, but only rarely, and few nurseries offer it for sale.
Read MoreAt this juncture, it might be said that the tree has been given a new design. Such a statement is true only to the extent that the new design is understood to be in transition. The design idea is not locked in. In naturalistic bonsai, the design process is both incremental and collaborative. In naturalistic bonsai design the tree’s agency is recognized and respected; the tree is partner to the design process.
Read MoreYou could never do that. You'd go out of your mind... but that's the point, right? Out of your mind. Leave your mind behind, leave thinking behind, live in the moment and be here now. Yeah, listen to you. What's the secret of life oh great guru?
Read MoreThe baldcypress water-and-land planting Mr. Zhao made for us in his 1998 demonstration program was remarkably good right from the time he put it together. It had a great feeling to it, a kind of authenticity that evoked the experience of being in nature, somewhere in the hushed coniferous forest where the sound of water splashing on rock is so persistent it ceases to be noticeable.
Read MoreThere was also a noticeable degree of creep taking place in the top of the tree. “Creep” is the term I use for changes naturally occurring in small increments over an extended period of time that aren’t initially recognized. Then one day you see plainly that things have changed and wonder how long it’s been going that way.
Read MoreKathy knew what to do. She selected two parts of the elm that looked promising and proceeded to air-layer them. One of the two air-layers was successful and Kathy then severed it from the parent tree and planted it in its own pot. She then began to style this new tree to give it a pleasing bonsai shape.
Read MoreThat which is thought to be optimal is often enough at odds with reality. We might have a plan that anticipates a certain course of events, but that can never be anything more than a starting point, after which things go the way they go due to circumstance. Mitigating factors in the world of bonsai growth and development include, but are not limited to: Weather conditions, incidence of disease and pest damage, accidents, mistakes, poor timing and availability of labor.
Read MoreEvery choice the grower makes has some effect. Good design depends on good choices, and choices have a better chance of being good if they are done with thoughtful, well-informed intention.
Read MoreWhat follows is an account of the late winter preparatory work done on a trident maple (Acer buergerianum) in a developmental phase. This same specimen has twice before been featured in the Curator’s Journal. The tree is revisited in this entry, on the cusp of its fourth growing season of bonsai development.
Read MoreIn 1995 the Arboretum hosted a visit from the popular American bonsai artist Chase Rosade. He had bunches of very young plants of differing species, and at the end of the class he had three Japanese stewartias (Stewartia pseudocamellia) that weren't utilized, so he gave them to the Arboretum.
Read MoreIt turned out that keeping this elm under control while giving it the freedom of growing in the ground was not practicably possible. When I cut it back in the spring the tree would simply explode with new growth, as if it would just as soon be a big bushy shrub if I wasn’t going to let it climb up to the sky.
Read MoreA grower needs to recognize a tree's nature and accept it. If it can't be accepted, then maybe that tree isn't the right one to work with. Many a bonsai has come to an ugly end because the person growing it was determined to make the poor tree conform to a preconceived design idea.
Read MoreShort of taking the sackcloth and ashes route and resorting to a life of humble debasement as penitence for having lived with eyes closed while whistling a happy tune in the face of the brutal randomness of our existence, there's little for it but to gather ourselves up and get back to business as usual, best we can.
Read MoreThe little red maple trees in the tray landscapes grew and presented a set of options with the multitude of parts they produced. In shaping them I relied entirely on the cut-and-grow method, using no training wire. With a pair of scissors I went about imagining life stories for the landscape trees, making choices as to what parts were lost and what path the canopy branches followed in their unending quest for sunlight.
Read MoreThree Asian species — Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), trident maple (Acer buergerianum) and Amur maple (Acer ginnala) — are all considered excellent for bonsai use. Why not red maple, which is abundantly available in Western North Carolina? The answers I heard from bonsai people I asked were so emphatically negative I became leery of even asking.
Read MoreNo bonsai is created in a day. This particular maple has been years in the making and the session it goes through today is just another step along a path, another increment working off the increments that preceded it and setting up the increments that will follow.
Read MoreRemember the adage that goes: "As the twig is bent so the tree is inclined"? It's an old saying, originally penned by poet Alexander Pope in 1732, and in full goes this way: "'Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."
Read MoreIn Creating a Tray Landscape, the latest in our five-part docuseries, Arthur again takes a landscape from inspiration to completion. He creates a new planting featuring a lone weathered hornbeam and woody shrubs assembled with sculptural rocks on a natural stone slab. It makes for a scene evocative of the craggy Southern Appalachian highlands.
Read MoreIt’s often our tendency when faced with a plant that looks unhealthy to reflexively think, What can I spray on it? One of the greatest dangers inherent in the use of chemical pesticides is that they are relatively cheap and easily available to anyone, regardless of the competence, intelligence or sanity of the buyer. These are dangerous and often lethal substances that can be purchased in quantity at the nearest big-box hardware store.
Read MoreOne truth learned by being observant and studying the ways of nature is that some parts of it line up with human desires and interests and some don't, and this is particularly true as regards farming and gardening. Those living beings in nature that facilitate the human impulse to cultivate plants we refer to as "garden beneficials." Those that work against our objectives we refer to as "garden pests."
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