Helen Davis was the name of a woman I met over the phone in 1995 when she was the contact for the Triangle Bonsai Society in Raleigh, NC, when Mr. Yoshimura went there and before he came to Asheville. Some months later, Ms. Davis sent me a letter and some photographs showing bonsai trees from her personal collection. The letter explained that she was offering any or all of the bonsai shown in the photos to the Arboretum bonsai collection, if we were interested. I made arrangements to visit Ms. Davis and she sent me home with a load of donated trees.

When I was at her place and she was showing me her bonsai, Ms. Davis directed my attention to a certain tray landscape planting featuring three very scraggly Shimpaku junipers (Juniperus chinensis ‘Shimpaku’), a little Kingsville boxwood (Buxus microphylla ‘Kingsville Dwarf’) , also scraggly, along with an uninspired stone that looked too much like a chunk of concrete, all arranged in an oval mica pot. "Now I know this one doesn't look like anything worthwhile," she said, "but I'd really like you to take it. It’s the bonsai Mr. Yoshimura made in his demonstration when he was here in March."

I was taken aback by this information. The little landscape looked miserable, like someone's first effort:

"He was really not well that day," said Ms. Davis, noting my doubtful expression. "Everyone who saw him that day knew something was wrong, and you can tell by the work he did that he wasn't himself. It's not very good," she said, looking sadly at the planting. "I haven't done anything with it except keep it alive, and the plants are all healthy. It will take years to make it into a good bonsai, but I think it's important that somebody take it on and develop it. Who knows if Mr. Yoshimura will ever make another one? This might be the last bonsai he ever does!" Ms. Davis was very sincere when she said this, and I was intrigued by the thought of the scruffy planting being the demonstration piece from that day. I told Ms. Davis I'd be happy to take the plant if she thought the Arboretum should have it. "Yes," she said. "Take it and see what you can do with it." Then Ms. Davis looked at me and in all seriousness said, "Make it look like he would have made it look!" This struck me as funny, yet quickly seeing she wasn't joking, I did not laugh. "I'll do my best," I said, and smiled.

There was no way I was going to be able to make those sad plants look like something done by Yuji Yoshimura. For one thing, he was a renowned bonsai expert and I was not — I didn't know enough yet at that point to even produce a reasonable imitation of a great artist's work. What’s more, the plants in that landscape were very young and virtually unshaped, like raw material still to be styled. So many decisions were yet to be made and there were multiple possible directions the development might go. If Mr. Yoshimura was the one making the decisions every step of the way, who knows what he might choose to do? Maybe one day he would look at the planting and decide to expand it, adding more elements, or maybe he'd be dissatisfied with the arrangement and take it apart to start over again. Anything might happen because one person’s way of seeing isn’t another’s and the course of creativity can't be predicted.

I took the tray landscape back to the Arboretum and set it out in the hoop house with the rest of the plants in our bonsai holdings. I worked with it now and then as a training piece, never forgetting its origin story but never putting too much stock in it, either. After two full growing seasons it looked like this:

In the spring of 1999, after another year of development, I was pleased enough with the progress of the landscape planting that I decided to upgrade the container. The original container was made of a compound material composed of mica, polyethylene and graphite, a cheaper substitute for ceramic pottery. The new container was very similar in size, shape and design to the original, but was a made of imported Japanese stoneware. I had a volunteer working with me at the time named Duane Clayburn. I gave the repotting job to Duane to do while I went to my office to take care of some desk work. After 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. I looked at it but didn't see anything unusual. "Something wrong with the roots?" I asked. Duane pointed at the empty pot sitting beside the planting, the original container from which the planting had just been removed. I looked then at the empty pot and saw something laying in it. I looked closer. It was a pair of old concave cutters, encrusted with potting medium. I gave Duane a questioning look. "I pulled the planting out of the pot," he said, "and those cutters were laying there. They were just like that — right in the middle on the bottom of the pot. I didn't touch them. I came and got you because I figured you'd want to see it with your own eyes." After looking a moment I asked Duane, "Do you think they're Yoshimura's?" Duane raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Who else's could they be?" he said. "You never repotted this since you got it, right? Those cutters must have been there since the day of the demonstration. They look like they’ve been buried for a long time." Duane, who knew Mr. Yoshimura personally, shook his head sadly and said, "He must have not known what he was doing."

I gathered up the abandoned tool and wrapped it in some paper towels. I gave Ms. Davis a call to update her on the discovery. I offered that she could have the cutters if she wanted them because she hadn't known they were there when she donated the planting. "Oh no," said Ms. Davis, "you need to keep them — they need to stay with the planting!" I asked her if she was sure and she said she was. I thanked her. "I guess that shows how sick he was," I said. "Imagine him not realizing that he did something like that." Then Ms. Davis mentioned a possibility I hadn't considered. "I think he knew what he was doing," she said. "I think he left those cutters there intentionally, because he knew he was done with them."

Here’s the landscape as it looked in it’s new container:

The discovery of the cutters hidden under the roots of this planting changed the way I thought about the piece. I had my doubts that Mr. Yoshimura left that tool there on purpose, but I couldn’t rule it out entirely as a possibility. He was an unusual individual, full of surprises, and always a showman with a flair for the dramatic. Burying his cutters in his final bonsai demonstration was exactly the sort of thing Mr. Yoshimura might do if he had the wherewithal to recognize the situation he was in. At the very least, the unexpected turn of events gave this bonsai an essence of something greater, something mysterious that hinted of deeper meaning, and so it has remained in my eyes ever since.

The first seventeen years working with this specimen I did everything I could to hold true to those basic design elements that seemed to indicate Mr. Yoshimura’s original intentions. I never changed the arrangement of the three junipers, and even today they have the same footprint as the day they were planted. Likewise, the boxwood and the stone were left as they were. Once, very early on, I placed a second stone under the trees, but removed it before too long in order to stay as true as possible to the arrangement as it was when we received it. Even when working with the branch structure of the junipers, wild as they initially were, I tried to not cut any major limbs. I was skeptical when Ms. Davis said I should grow this landscape just as Mr. Yoshimura would have done, but that seemed to be what I was trying to do.

In October of 2005, the three-tree landscape was on display at the premier of the Bonsai Exhibition Garden:

As may be noticed in the lower left corner of the above image, Mr. Yoshimura’s planting had been given a poetic name: Rest in the Shade of the Trees. The planting was ten years old by this time and the old master who created it was long gone. I wanted to signify somehow that this specimen had a secret, a special association, without stating it in obvious terms. The poetic name came from a curious bit of history that was lodged in my mind — the reported last words of Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Jackson, the story goes, lay dying from a bullet wound received after winning a great battle. He was stretched out on a cot, in an unconscious delirium and apparently dreaming he was still in battle, and he was talking aloud, giving orders to his troops. At the very end he grew calm and before dying finally said, “Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.”

There was no link in real life between Stonewall Jackson and Mr. Yoshimura that I know of. I was looking at the planting as a scene and imagining that a person might rest under the junipers, and that brought to mind the poignant words of a dying man. In my mind it all connected somehow with the old artist at the end of his long road and those cutters left buried under the little trees.

In the years that followed, Rest in the Shade of the Trees was often on display in the bonsai garden (click on any image for full view):

2008

2009

2010

Examination of the three images above will reveal some subtle changes that were taking place in Rest in the Shade of the Trees. At some time between when the 2008 and 2009 photos were made, a very low branch was removed from the juniper set furthest back in the planting. I thought that branch made the space on the lower right side of the group too visually dense, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the vitality of the branch because it wasn’t getting enough light. Note too that the original boxwood, which had grown big and round, was swapped out for smaller, more irregularly shaped boxwood of the same variety. Less noticeable was a change in the stone situated to the left of the boxwood. I never liked the look of the original stone so it was swapped for one that was similar in size, color and shape, but of better character. I was still trying to hold to Mr. Yoshimura’s arrangement of the landscape, but gradually making changes I felt improved the overall presentation.

A few more adjustments had been made by the time of the next image:

As seen above, more pruning work was done on the low branches on the right side of the juniper group, creating greater openness in that area. The group of three trees, although still in the same relationship to each other, had been rotated counter-clockwise. This brought the tree in the back into closer visual relationship to the primary tree, located on the left side of the group. Additionally, the three trees as a group were planted more toward the middle of the container. All this fussing around indicates I was feeling dissatisfied with the composition and trying to find ways to address my concerns.

In the picture below, made a year after the previous image, the group of three trees has been rotated clockwise, bringing them back to a position similar to how they had originally been.

An October dusting of snow that same year gave Rest in the Shade of the Trees a different look:

The following two images from 2015 show the planting from opposing perspectives. It is horticulturally beneficial to rotate bonsai so they are not always receiving sunlight from the same direction:

In 2017 Rest in the Shade of the Trees received a thorough and detailed pruning:

Just a year after being pruned as rigorously as I dared to do it, the junipers in Rest in the Shade of the Trees had filled in once more:

I think the above image captured this specimen at its peak for the design it was originally given. Surely, many tweaks were made along the way, but the basic elements of the design — three junipers, a boxwood and a stone — remained constant. That was soon to change.

The image below shows some significant alterations in the planting scheme for Rest in the Shade of the Trees. After having spent more than twenty years in the same container, the landscape was ready for some more room. The new pot was not anything special; it simply provided more space. The boxwood was moved from the left to the right side of the three junipers. Additional stones were added, too, including a long one placed to the rear of the juniper group. I liked the new look well enough to have the planting on display in the garden the year the photo was made, but I suspected this specimen was still in transition.

The gallery below gives three views of Rest in the Shade of the Trees as it appeared at the end of 2023 (click on any image for full view):

The planting had been taken off display and allowed to grow more or less unrestrained, building strength in preparation for the next round of alterations. By this time I was no longer very much concerned with how Mr. Yoshimura had put it together originally. This in no way shows any measure of disrespect for my old teacher, but is rather a final recognition that bonsai is not a static art form. The plants are alive and growing, and that means it is not possible for them to always look the same. Also, the person who grows the bonsai — the one who holds the scissors when work is done on it — is the one who ultimately decides what that bonsai will look like. Mr. Yoshimura put this planting together on one very bad day near the end of his life. He did what he could at the time with what he was given to work with. In the three decades since then the bonsai he first made has been grown by someone else, who has worked with the planting as it matured and changed year by year, who has engaged with it and thought about it as a composition, as a presentation, always striving for improvement.

That person was me. I couldn’t make the bonsai look like Mr. Yoshimura would have because I’m not Mr. Yoshimura. But I was — and remain and always will be — a student of Yoshimura. In fact, the way it went, I was Mr. Yoshimura’s last student. Of all the countless people who took lessons from the great old teacher over the course of his long and active teaching life, it turned out I was the last to have that intensive, one-on-one, teacher-student relationship. That was simply a matter of chance, of being in the right place at the right time, of having made the right connections to the right people to bring me to a particular moment that set in motion a certain chain of events. It could have happened like that with anyone.

In a similar way, it was a matter of chance that this modest tray landscape came to be in the Arboretum’s collection. And it was a matter of chance that years later we found Mr. Yoshimura’s cutters hidden under the roots of the junipers. It was just chance. Just the way things happened to go.

Right?

It was not by chance I let Rest in the Shade of the Trees take some time off, allowing the junipers to grow unrestrained for awhile so they could build strength. I had purchased a high-quality oval stoneware container made by Sara Rayner, specifically intending to finally have this landscape planted in a proper pot. In late summer of 2024 I worked on the piece, heavily pruning the junipers and transplanting them into the new pot. I didn’t bother replanting the boxwood or replacing stones in the arrangement. That’s not to say those elements won’t return someday or other elements won’t someday be introduced, just that for now they’re not there. For now, Rest in the Shade of the Trees consists of three junipers that have been in the same relationship with each other for a long time, spreading their limbs to create a broad canopy under which someone with imagination can set themselves down on a sunny day, and rest.

The gallery below offers an in-the-round presentation of Rest in the Shade of the Trees as it currently exists (click on any image for full view):