It took a long time to build that bonsai. To change it would require some drastic alterations that would likely set the tree back a decade or so. Whenever considering such a move you have to question if the end result would warrant the effort. Every tree has a certain limited capacity for perfection.
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.
Read MoreTrees, like human beings and all the rest of organic life, are not only subject to stress but are actually shaped by it. Think of a tree limb. A big, powerful, undulating tree limb is the product of a life of stress — the stress of reaching out to hold its leaves in position to access sunlight, and to hold them that way despite their weight and the weight of the limb itself against the force of gravity.
Read MoreThere is a process at work here: Every year in spring the tree is cut back hard, then allowed to grow unrestrained for a year. Out of the new growth some new possibility might present itself, or some previous idea could be undone by what happens in the course of a year of unrestrained growth. Flexibility is necessary; the tree has some say in what it will ultimately look like.
Read MoreMay begins with an array of colors in the landscape that is at least the equal of the celebrated colors of autumn. There is a certain color that, for reasons of marketing products like paint, is called "spring green.” But spring green is an amalgamation of just about every shade of green there is, from the dark richness of a spruce tree to the ghostly paleness of a fern’s unfurling fiddlehead.
Read MoreWhen I think back on that time in Washington so long ago the memory is golden to me, an experience that positively changed my life. Connections made there that April led to other important learning experiences in the years to come, eventually taking me all the way to the other side of the world and back again.
Read MoreIt is possible, even likely, that the person who creates a particular piece of self expression, such as a bonsai, intends it to be perceived a certain way, to tell a certain story, but other people interpret it differently. There is nothing at all wrong with this. Ideas spark other ideas, and diversity is the catalyst in the evolutionary process that pushes all creation forward.
Read MoreThe Arboretum's collection has quite a few nice little trees with big, impressive trunks, and many of them were produced right here. How was it done? In-ground growing is the answer. Over the past 25 years or so, I've been refining my technique for producing small trees with large trunks. The new video presented here demonstrates part of the process.
Read MoreIn my experience, April is a natural time for beginnings. I was born in April, in 1957, met my wife in April of 1978, and began my career at The North Carolina Arboretum in April of 1990. As regards horticulture, in this part of the world April is when the growing season is undeniably underway.
Read MoreMy mind conjures up an image of all the tiny buds on all the little branches slowly swelling, then breaking, bursting open, pushing forth new growth all at once. Then that new growth begins extending, fresh green leaves unfurling, shoots stretching out everywhere in a riot of unleashed life.
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