From the Ground Up

When the 1993 World Bonsai Convention in Orlando was over and I returned to work, there was so much to do. It was springtime and our fledgling bonsai collection was leafed out and growing, and now my imagination had been sparked by both the convention experience and the study period in D.C. before that. My mind was full of big ideas about improving the Arboretum's trees and all the work it was going to take to begin building a program to support them. But it was springtime in the nursery, too. There were thousands of potted plants to tend and scores more growing in the field, and my job title was "Nursery Assistant." Nursery work was my first priority so that was where my attention needed to be, and bonsai would have to wait for free time. That was what I had agreed to, actually what I had insisted on when the bonsai job was offered to me — that the nursery work should come first and bonsai work would be done in my free time. Because I wasn't originally keen on doing bonsai at all, relegating it to a period of time that didn't really exist was not a problem. Now it was a problem.

It was a scramble to keep up with demand in the growing season that year. My supervisor, the nursery manager, rightly expected my full participation in all the many nursery projects that were ongoing, and of course the standard chores of watering, weeding and transplanting nursery stock had to be completed on schedule and done well. But for all that, he was good about giving me time when it could be spared. The bonsai collection was kept in the nursery hoop house, so the little trees were where I could see them, and seeing them meant thinking about them and wanting to do things with them. Whatever time I had to work with the bonsai, however, was taken up with simply trying to keep new growth under control. That growing season was the real beginning of my new identity. I was monitoring the collection daily and responding to its needs, starting to feel responsible for the little trees and gradually taking ownership of them. Bob Drechsler had told me that's how it needed to be and I was beginning to understand what he meant.

At this time I also began consuming bonsai books and periodicals in an almost compulsive way. I'd look at them while I ate my lunch at work and then I'd be into them again at night after my children were put to bed. I became familiar with Mr. Yoshimura's famous book, The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees and Landscapes, but also spent a lot of time poring over a book by British bonsai artist Harry Tomlinson titled, The Complete Book of Bonsai: A Practical Guide to Its Art and Cultivation. There was so much I had to learn! Fortunately I had my prior nursery training to give me a good foundation in horticulture, so that aspect of my new responsibility was not as intimidating as it might have been. However, there was now another whole dimension to growing plants, involving novel techniques relative to the shaping and training of miniature trees. This design aspect introduced the element of aesthetics, beyond the usual standard of producing a healthy plant specimen. I knew something about art, but not this particular kind of art. The whole matter of how bonsai trees are supposed to look became a subject of intense interest to me, and the pictures of bonsai in books and magazines became my prime examples. I looked at them constantly and studied them deeply.

As 1994 began, the broader outlines of a new reality were taking shape for both the Arboretum and me. Institutionally, the Arboretum had decided to make at least a limited commitment to bonsai. We had accepted the donation of a compromised collection, brought it to the Arboretum and hired a consultant to conduct an appraisal and do the initial necessary restoration work on the trees. A person on staff had been designated as caretaker of the new bonsai collection, although no real accommodation had been made for the time needed to do any bonsai work. That person had been sent to Washington, D.C., to study with experts and then allowed to attend a World Bonsai Convention. Although there was no clearly delineated path forward toward a bonsai program in support of the collection, there was an expectation that progress would be made in that direction.

Personally, as the one selected to be caretaker, I had accepted the bonsai assignment with some trepidation. After the experience of studying at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, I began to see the thing in a different light, recognizing certain potentialities in the new assignment that were not initially apparent to me. I had come to the Arboretum in 1990 hoping to find more meaningful work than I had previously known, almost desperate to learn and grow and become very good at something. What that something might be was unknown to me, but I supposed it should involve the natural world somehow, and that the work had to engage both my head and my hands while providing an avenue for creativity and self expression. Looking back now it seems obvious enough that bonsai was a remarkably good fit for me based on that criteria. But it took a while to recognize that, because bonsai came cloaked in such a strange wrapper.

Having warmed to the challenge of making something out of this new career opportunity, I turned my attention toward building some sort of support community for the Arboretum's bonsai efforts. I decided to stage an event at the Arboretum that would target a specifically bonsai-knowledgeable audience. I contacted Dan Chiplis, assistant curator at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, and asked if he would consider coming to Asheville and helping us out. Dan was a friend and a good guy, so he agreed to be guest artist at this first Arboretum bonsai gathering. What's more, he did so without remuneration, which was perfectly in line with our budget. Then I turned to Don Torppa, the consultant who had been hired when the donation first arrived. He was a member of the Bonsai Society of the Carolinas (BSC) in Charlotte, the oldest bonsai club in the Carolinas, founded in 1964. Don provided a mailing list of BSC members, and I sent them all the following letter:

A couple of people in the BSC were also members of the Columbia-based Bonsai Club of South Carolina, and they contacted me beforehand to ask if it would be okay for their club to attend, as well. I was pleased to welcome them. In all, maybe twenty-five people from both clubs turned out. With the exception of Don Torppa, they were all unknown to me at that time, although several of them later became good friends and supporters of the Arboretum's bonsai program. The success of this modest venture laid the groundwork for a nexus of regional bonsai interest that had The North Carolina Arboretum at its center and would eventually find its full expression in the Carolina Bonsai Expo.

Here is a worn and faded fragment of memory, from that long ago day when the Arboretum debuted our bonsai collection to the Charlotte and Columbia club members: We were all out in the hoop house, surveying the donated bonsai trees. I was moving about, eagerly watching reactions and listening in on what people were saying. As I passed a couple of guys from South Carolina, I caught a snippet of their conversation. One was telling the other, “Oh it’s a nice tree — it would look good out on someone’s deck. I’m just saying that it’s not a bonsai!” They were standing in front of a large, upright, cutleaf Japanese maple with a wide, umbrella-like crown. Later, after everyone was gone, I was back out in the hoop house standing before the same tree. I looked it over and thought to myself: I wonder why this one’s not a bonsai?