A 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.
Read MoreThere is a sense of timelessness inherent in a finely crafted bonsai. When the viewer stands before such a piece, there is the illusion of a moment suspended, an impression of all that came before and all that is to come obscured as if under enchantment. It is as if the bonsai came into existence just as it is and will always remain just so.
Read MoreIt is impossible to know what the future might hold for young and undeveloped talent. When I was young and collected baseball cards, the card manufacturers treated rookie baseball players the same way for the same reason. "Rookie" cards combined two unknown young players on one card. Usually, neither of the players would amount to much.
Read MoreOnce Don designated the bougainvillea as being excess plant material — not worth the trouble — it became valuable to me. I was not trying to prove anything or setting out on a mission to save it, but once the bougainvillea was deemed unworthy that meant nothing I might do to it would mess it up. I could try to make a good bonsai out of the wild bougainvillea just for practice, and if it didn't work out the plant could still go to the compost pile.
Read MoreThose little trees earn their keep at this time of year by providing a leafy green bonsai presence in the Baker greenhouse from December until the middle of May. People appreciate seeing the tropical bonsai looking so vibrantly alive while the temperate world outside, wrapped up in the somber cloak of dormancy, settles into the relative dullness of cold winter.
Read MoreThe beech trees used in this planting were grown from seed at the Arboretum in 1993 as part of the landscape nursery operation. When California bonsai artist Ben Oki visited us in 1996 we gave him some of these very young trees and asked him to make a group arrangement of them.
Read MoreIt might be supposed by people who don't know the backstory that this specimen was given the poetic name The Ogre in reference to the gnarly features of the deadwood, which can be read as a monstrous creature with one small, beady eye glaring out. But really it was named for the person who collected, styled and donated the little tree to our collection: Nick Lenz, the original wild man of American bonsai.
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