People who get into bonsai in a big way typically go through a phase early on in which every woody plant they see is evaluated for its potential to be made into a bonsai. That is, they will look at any smaller sized tree or shrub in a pot or in the ground and imagine how it might literally be turned into a designed miniature tree. These people are enthusiastic about bonsai and know that good candidates for making new bonsai are out there, waiting only to be found by the intrepid enthusiast with a keen eye. This same impulse, carried just a small step further, leads to looking at big trees in the landscape and figuratively making them into bonsai. A person engaged in such mental tinkering might look at a big tree and think in terms of removing this branch here, or drastically shortening one of those two trunks, or moving this other branch down and to the left to fill in a disagreeably open space in a certain section of the crown. These actions are not considered in a realistic way, but purely as an imaginary undertaking. It's a form of practice in bonsai design.

Truth be told, I used to "practice" like that, but never do any more. I stopped doing so after it finally occurred to me that I had the matter standing on its head. Studying full grown trees and figuring out how to reshape them so they might look more the way a bonsai looks reveals a highly conditioned way of seeing and thinking. It requires a preconceived idea of what looks good on a tree. There is no problem for the student of bonsai to have this preconceived idea because we are rigorously taught what looks right and what doesn't when we learn about designing trees. Often this training includes encouraging the student to look upon all bonsai with an aggressively critical eye to find defects and then strategize how to fix them. Being able to identify at least one shortcoming in any given bonsai is the mark of a truly serious student. It's not hard to understand how such a student might go from performing reflexive critical evaluations of little trees in pots to doing the same with full grown trees in the landscape, where the arboreal shapes encountered are wild and badly in need of ordering. Trees, the student comes to understand, are full of defects that need correcting if one is to make them beautiful. As an earnest bonsai acquaintance from long ago once explained to me, "Bonsai is an improvement on nature." That idea didn't sit well with me, even back then when I was still looking at trees in the landscape and figuring how I could make them look better by applying bonsai design theory.

There wasn't any single incident that changed my mind on this subject. Rather, my thinking evolved as my knowledge of trees as living organisms grew and I devoted ever more time and effort to studying them. Trees were of interest to me as visual objects long before I arrived at The North Carolina Arboretum — I've always liked the look of trees and that attraction was part of what led me to the Arboretum in the first place. Working at the Arboretum provided the opportunity (and obligation) to acquire more scientific knowledge about trees, primarily from a horticultural standpoint. Learning how to grow trees from seeds, how to cultivate them in containers and in the field, naturally led to a better firsthand understanding of tree biology. When I was given the job of caring for the Arboretum's bonsai collection, pruning became a greater portion of my tree work and that prompted further understanding of how trees function biologically. Learning the science of trees opened up a new avenue of appreciation beyond simply being attracted by their appearance.

As it happened, being given responsibility for the bonsai collection eventually brought me back around to the subject of trees as visual stimuli. I underwent the training that has previously been described in this Journal and learned how bonsai are supposed to be designed. I followed the teachings conscientiously because I wanted to be good at my work. Initially the aesthetical part of my bonsai job seemed separate from the technical aspect that was concerned with how trees grow. In order to successfully grow trees as a crop it was necessary to understand how they go about the business of living, but in order to correctly design trees it was necessary to study standard examples of accepted bonsai styles. This I dutifully did, up to a point. After awhile it became plainly evident that the image of trees as presented in most bonsai examples did not line up with the reality of trees as I was seeing them all around me. This revelation was the result of spending ever more time out in the field, purposefully studying the physical structure of trees. Whereas I had always found them pleasing to look at, now I was being more analytical, trying to really see trees and understand how they are put together. When observing trees in this manner I could usually find a few that looked sort of bonsai-ish, but most did not. Some trees I thought particularly appealing did not look anything like bonsai. I began to closely scrutinize these most alluring specimens in an attempt to understand what about their appearance set them apart in such a compelling way. At the same time, I began to wonder about the forces that cause such trees to assume their eye-catching shapes. The surprising answer at which I ultimately arrived is that the aesthetic component relates directly to the science of trees, or more exactly, to the nature of trees.

I am no expert on tree biology, let's get that right out in the open. I know more than most people, but most people don't know much about how trees live and grow. And most people don’t think at all about how trees come to be shaped the way they are.

With considerable time and effort I was able to get my thinking right about tree aesthetics, putting an end to the pastime of mentally altering big trees in the landscape to make them over as bonsai. Now when I look at trees in nature my thoughts are not about what's wrong with them that needs fixing, but what's right about them that makes them worth looking at. The idea that humans can improve nature is pure hubris. We can only learn from nature. The natural world is the source of everything we know, and at this critical stage of the game for our species it's apparent we haven't learned enough. The little I have learned about tree biology has opened my eyes as to why trees have always been so visually appealing to me. That, in turn, opened the door to a whole different way to go about designing bonsai. And that, to bring the critical issue fully into focus, led to The North Carolina Arboretum having the bonsai collection we do.

There will be much more to say about this in Journal entries to come.

Critical Thinking