"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

Do you believe in fate? That is, do you think what happens to you occurs because events were destined to go that way?

Or, do you believe in free will? That is, do you think you choose your own actions and thereby determine your own destiny?

A donation of bonsai trees came to an arboretum at which I was employed, and because I was working in the nursery growing woody plants in containers and had a background in art, responsibility for the little trees was given to me on speculation. Growing and shaping little trees proved to be appealing. I learned that bonsai is nothing more than a particular way to cultivate plants, with potential for the grower to exercise creative expression in deciding how the plants are made to look, and I warmed to the idea of doing it. At the time this was happening for me — early to mid-1990s — bonsai in the United States was practiced almost entirely in imitation of Japan. The primary bonsai teachers in the country were elderly Japanese Americans, and their students had became the next generation of teachers, carrying on the venerable teachings. Japan was thought of as the center of the bonsai universe, the place from which all knowledge was derived and to which the most sincere homage was religiously paid.

Coming into the world of bonsai as an outsider, entering through the door of horticultural interest, at first I ambivalently accepted the prevailing view. I was in it for the plants and the creative potential, but broadening my understanding of a foreign culture wasn't objectionable. The history, art and customs of Japan are deep and rich. Even so, I didn't have much personal interest in that subject. I was focused on learning how to grow and shape little trees, and the Japanese cultural element was just a curious embellishment that happened to be thrown into the bargain. The cultural connection seemed to me to be a sort of frame around the bonsai picture, and not actually part of the picture itself. I quickly learned to keep such thoughts to myself, however, because so many bonsai people seemed to think the Japanese cultural element was intrinsic to the whole concept of making little trees. It was as if there was no way to succeed in bonsai without immersing oneself in the Japanese way of thinking and doing.

I didn't see how that could be true. Bonsai is a form of horticulture and horticulture is a worldwide phenomenon, with no particular place having ownership of the way it may be practiced. Bonsai has the potential to be art and art is created worldwide, with no one culture having exclusive claim. Bonsai is about trees, and an amazing array of tree species are found all over the world, growing without regard for geopolitical boundaries. What part of the bonsai construct, exactly, was inseparable from the culture of Japan? Any time I probed that question the response from other bonsai people ranged from disinterest to puzzlement to annoyance to hostility. The Japanese-ness of bonsai was a given. If you had to ask why that was, maybe you weren't cut out for bonsai.

When I went to the Executive Director's office that day to plead for more time dedicated to doing bonsai, the discussion was substantive. George called my attention to the Arboretum's original master plan, drawn up years before by a major landscape architecture firm from Massachusetts, which called for a Japanese garden to be built alongside Bent Creek. He noted that the Japanese garden hadn't been built and there was no plan to build one in the foreseeable future. Likewise there were no plans for an Italian garden or an English garden or any other type of garden associated with some other place. We were The North Carolina Arboretum in the Southern Appalachian region of the United States, engaged in the business of building our own identity, which would primarily reflect our own unique place in the world. George noted that the three gardens comprising the Arboretum's core area, opened to the public just a year earlier, all modeled this approach. The Heritage Garden honored our region's cultural plant history, the Quilt Garden floristically interpreted an old-time mountain tradition, and the Stream Garden evoked the many small watercourses found in the Southern Appalachians. That's when the Executive Director asked his challenging question: How does bonsai fit in?

The truth of the matter was that bonsai as an emblem of another culture did not fit in. I knew that. Nothing I saw of the arboretum developing all around me suggested that an ancient art from the mystical Orient belonged in the mix, and that wasn't an addition I wanted to see, either. This was a case of needing to let go of a certain aspect of something in order to have the greater something succeed. The beauty of the situation was that the aspect needing to be shed was an element I intuitively thought to be unnecessary anyway.

It wasn't difficult to find the words I wrote in the justification document. The ideas had been percolating in my mind for awhile, beginning at least two years earlier after my study time with Mr. Yoshimura. Think big, he advised me, and find a new way to engage the public with bonsai. I didn't really know what the new way might be, but I was actively thinking about it. When the Executive Director told me the door was effectively closed on any possibility of bonsai being presented at The North Carolina Arboretum the way it was presented at all the other public gardens with collections, I gathered up all the ideas I had and recorded them on paper. Looking back on what I wrote from a distance of almost thirty years, the justification document might have benefited from taking a little time to tighten up my argument, maybe streamlining and crafting it a bit. A rapid response seemed more important to me at the time. The boss had issued a challenge and I wanted my reply to come back to him immediately, with vigor and confidence.

The Arboretum's alternative view of bonsai has been, I think, key to our success. Most people outside the bonsai community — which is to say, most people — seem better able to connect with bonsai when the focus is on nature rather than on exotic culture. In my experience, people within the bonsai community tend not to feel that way. Bonsai people appreciate nature, of course, but they specifically like to view it through a lens that gives nature a certain added essence. This critical but sensitive subject will be addressed more fully later on.

Right now, what matters is that we drop a marker on this spot in the narrative to signify that something important happened.

When the Executive Director told me straight out that there was no place for bonsai at The North Carolina Arboretum if bonsai had to get by on the appeal of foreign culture, the die was cast. When, in response, I wrote the bonsai justification manifesto, I was signaling my agreement and presenting a map for an alternate route. Understand — the future of bonsai at the Arboretum was still far from secure at this juncture. The only certainty was that bonsai would have to be done differently here, if it were to be done at all.

Was it fate that the Arboretum's bonsai identity should have come about this way? Or, was it a matter of chance that certain forces came together to produce the outcome? My own mind is never made up on the matter.

The following images show a ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) from the collection, recently planted in a container made by Robert Wallace:

The Need to Justify - Part 2