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!
Read MoreVisitors to the Expo were encouraged to vote for their favorite bonsai and in 2013 John’s baldcypress won hands down. Small wonder — the specimen is big and obviously old, and to see such a tree growing in a container defies belief for the average person.
Read MoreFoliage is wonderful, of course, but on a deciduous species the foliage is absent half the year. In the landscape, a naked Japanese cutleaf maple can still be beautiful for its form, particularly in the display of its branching and finely articulated twigs. The same can be true of a Japanese cutleaf maple bonsai when seen without its leaves. It can be true, but is not automatically so.
Read MoreMr. Martin had a diverse collection with some older looking specimens, and seemed to like his little trees to be on the large side. Most amazingly, a substantial portion of Mr. Martin's bonsai, including some of the larger, older looking pieces, were trees he had grown himself from seed.
Read MoreOf the six or seven trees Kent had rounded up for our consideration, the one at which he now pointed was easily the least impressive. It was another pine, a Japanese black pine by the looks of it, wildly overgrown and terribly leggy. I didn’t see anything to recommend it.
Read MoreIt must have looked suspicious. Picture a rest stop off an Interstate, a van parked by itself a little removed from any other vehicles. Two men stand outside the van, waiting expectantly, looking down the road and one of them now and then checks his watch. Finally a second van pulls up, right alongside the first.
Read MoreBanyan is a catch-all phrase for several different species of figs (Ficus sp.) that share the trait of producing what are known as prop roots from their trunks and branches. Emerging like threads from the tree's bark, these roots are pulled downwards by gravity until they come in contact with the ground.
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 MoreAfter twenty minutes or so, Duane came to my office and stood silently in the doorway. I looked up at him. "I think you better come look at this," he said. I walked down the short hallway to the headhouse work area, and there was the landscape planting out of the pot and sitting on the table.
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 MoreI sensed I had been maneuvered into a situation that had been carefully pre-arranged by Kent. I didn't mind it so much because he had made clear what was possible and what wasn’t, and he had done it so smoothly, with such good cheer and affability. I turned attention to the trees he was offering.
Read MoreThe call has come on many occasions. Someone has a bonsai collection that's become too much to handle, and now the trees need a new home. Our entire bonsai enterprise at the Arboretum began with just such a call, when the Staples family reached out to us about their mother's collection. The situation that prompts the call is almost always sad because it signals the end of someone's bonsai journey.
Read MoreA fact that hadn't been so obvious before gradually became more evident to me while revisiting the history of this tree. Our Chinese quince bonsai seems to have served me as a personal gateway to naturalism. Naturalism in this context refers to a bonsai style, just as classical, neoclassical and modern are also bonsai styles.
Read MoreThe big "Y" shape formed by the sharply shifting angle of the trunk in combination with the strong right angle first branch was still in the middle of the composition, looking as awkward as ever. I wanted to address that now, but short of removing that big branch what could be done?
Read MoreSuch a state of full resolution is never achieved in bonsai. Because of the living nature of the medium, creative work with any individual bonsai is ongoing for the duration of the bonsai’s existence. The fact that the bonsai is alive dictates that it will change. Life entails growth and decline, and both are expressed in transformation.
Read MoreI raised the tree from a seedling, birthed it as a bonsai, gave it its form, worked with it for nearly three decades and have always been fond of it. It was on display in the bonsai garden for many years and was even an Expo poster child. Yet somehow I've never been satisfied with this bonsai and have always struggled to work through my issues with it.
Read MoreRedcedar is not a favored bonsai subject, I think mostly because it is difficult to find suitable old trees with which to work. Trying to grow a redcedar bonsai from young material is a long term, long shot project. All four of the redcedar bonsai in our collection were donated to us, so they all had some age on them before we started working on them.
Read MoreOn the eve of construction, before the bulldozer came to work over the site in preparation for building the garden, I dug up one of the scraggly young serviceberries and put it in a pot. The little two-trunked tree didn't look like much. Collecting it was an impulsive act, done in the spirit of saving some living piece of what used to be, knowing that the space was about to be transformed.
Read MoreThe tree looked more convincingly decrepit but still grew strongly in its branching and foliage. The container made of chestnut wood also became more picturesquely weathered as it aged. For a few years everything was right about this planting and it attained that golden stage of development when the illusion of timelessness seemed permanent. Then the bubble burst.
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