Gardens are beautiful because there is beauty in life. There is more than that, though. It is the inescapable fact of existence as we know it, that where there is life there must inevitably be death. Life feeds on death, on all levels from the microscopic to the largest manifestations of creative energy.
Read MoreLet us take one last walk through the garden, down
The path we have strolled so many times before
In earlier days made golden by the alchemy of time.
Read MoreWho does not feel something stir within them when they look upon the sight of autumn color in the landscape? What accounts for the melancholy we often feel, contemplating the changing landscape under a gray and cloudy sky, with the smell of wood smoke and a quiet chill carried on the breeze? Why does the past sometimes feel so close in autumn?
Read MoreThere are times when the growing season feels never-ending, like the pruning and watering and close monitoring of the display trees and the garden landscape will go on forever. Nothing goes on forever, though. Summer is where the action is. Summer is alive and vibrant, demanding and exhausting. This was the thirty-first summer of bonsai at the Arboretum, the eighteenth summer in the bonsai garden. It was a good one, and now it's officially over.
Read MoreThis small area is referred to as the Upper Level Entry Garden. It is very much part of the bonsai garden and it is maintained in the same manner. That means the Scots pine is pruned and shaped in a way that gives it an appearance suggestive of a bonsai.
Read MoreEven without the little trees, the jewels at the heart of the garden’s identity, the place enchants. People slow down as they walk through, they speak more softly and look more carefully. The bonsai garden is not large but there is much to see in the layers of detail contained within. The second stage of spring in the bonsai garden begins on the second Saturday in May — World Bonsai Day — when the bonsai are returned to their benches and the garden is made whole.
Read MoreThe American hornbeam had previously been part of a different Arboretum landscape planting, but was removed because it had a more noticeably crooked trunk than the other trees with which it had been planted. The rejected hornbeam was in a storage area for several years when I noticed it and asked about its availability. The same crooked trunk that was previously seen as a flaw made the tree attractive for its new assignment.
Read MoreAlthough 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 divorced from their natural context. The work done to enhance their aesthetic appeal can never be in conflict with their horticultural needs.
Read MoreThe bonsai garden is once again in a state of completion. It can be so only when the little trees are out on display and the public is there to experience them in the context of that special place created just for their enjoyment. The garden is not whole until the bonsai are in it. Just as the Arboretum, wonderful as it is, is more wonderful still when the bonsai garden is whole.
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