It was November 1992 when bonsai arrived at The North Carolina Arboretum. It had been well over a year since the Arboretum negotiated to eventually receive the donation of a bonsai collection belonging to Mrs. Cora Staples of Butner, North Carolina. I had no part in those dealings. Mrs. Staples had been ill and then it was determined she was terminally ill and she lingered, unable to take care of her bonsai trees but unable to let them go on to their new home. During that time I was chosen to be the person on staff who would take care of the little trees once they arrived. In preparation for that new responsibility, I made a trip to Butner in early summer to check in on the bonsai and do whatever I might in support of sustaining the collection. I didn't know anything about bonsai at that time, so all I could do was evaluate the bonsai as plants. As plants, they were dying.

It is unknown how large a collection Cora Staples had when she was in the prime of her bonsai days. Based on what I saw, she may well have had two hundred plants or more. At the time of that first visit in 1992 I found a large number of bonsai set out in an open lawn, on the ground, in apparently random order. There was a rotary sprinkler on a high riser set up in the middle of them. I was told that on any sunny day Mr. Staples would go out and turn on the sprinkler for an hour, and that was the extent of care the plants generally received. What little else was done for them was contributed by a member of the Blue Ridge Bonsai Society named John Cook, who drove all the way out to Butner on a couple occasions just to spend a few days working on the collection. John was keen to see the Arboretum, then a very new institution, acquire a bonsai collection. He went to the personal effort and expense of trying to protect the collection during the time between when Mrs. Staples became housebound and when she passed. At one time early on John met Mrs. Staples, which I never did. On my first visit to see the little trees she was only slightly visible, the indistinct face of an old woman sitting by a second-floor window, looking down from a large house.

As I wandered around the yard inspecting the layout, I was briefly accompanied by Mr. George Staples, a gruff but successful businessman of comfortable means. It was plain enough that he was not knowledgeable about bonsai, or necessarily even interested in it. Bonsai had been his wife's fascination and he financed her interest, but the wonder of miniature trees escaped him. Mr. Staples told me that some of the bonsai were dying and he took me to a nearby part of his property, a place closed-in with overgrowth and out of view of the house, where there was a sizable pile of bonsai corpses. When Mr. Staples came across a plant he felt for certain was dead he would carry it out to that spot, where it would be removed from its pot and added to the pile. John Cook told me he had taken numerous dead bonsai out to that final resting place, too. I had never seen such a sight before and it made a strong impression on me.

Overall the situation was not good. There were still many living plants, but some were noticeably overgrown and others had dead parts or were of poor appearance. There was not a lot to be done as long as the collection remained in Butner. The Arboretum was too far away to be of much help and the plants did not technically belong to us yet. When I returned to the Arboretum and reported what I had seen, an effort was made over the phone to try and persuade the Staples family to let the remaining plants come to Asheville. I was not part of that conversation so I cannot say much about it, except the upshot was that Mrs. Staples would not agree to let the plants go. And so the bonsai remained spread out on the lawn, growing wild while a rotary sprinkler was either keeping them alive or drowning them to death, all through the long, hot Piedmont summer.

When the Staples' bonsai collection finally came to the Arboretum, the donation was conveyed in two trips using two pickup trucks. I drove one of the trucks and it was my own -- a 1974 F-150 with a camper cover. A co-worker drove the other truck, one of two pickups the Arboretum had at the time, which was also a late-model Ford with a camper cover. The drive between Butner and Asheville took nearly five hours each way and the two journeys there and back were done as day trips, only a few days apart. In total there were one hundred plants in the donation, although that number included some that were pretty skimpy -- young plants in little bonsai pots. Others, however, were large and heavy. There were also a good many empty pots, some tools and wire, and a number of accessory statuettes of little Chinese figures. We really had to pack the trucks to make everything fit in two trips, but amazingly we hauled everything without doing any damage. I had plenty of time on the long drive to think about how these desperate little trees would impact my life, but honestly, I don't remember what went through my mind.

Once the bonsai were at the Arboretum they were divided into tropical and temperate species. The tropicals headed to the greenhouse and the temperate trees were taken out to the hoop house, where room was made among the many containerized plants being grown for landscape use. Arboretum management, recognizing there was need for an immediate assessment of what we had taken on and restoration work that had to be conducted as soon as possible, reached out to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum at the US National Arboretum in Washington, DC. The Museum in turn referred us to a well known American bonsai artist in Pennsylvania named Chase Rosade. Chase said he was too busy and too far away to help us, but he referred us to a bonsai man in Charlotte named Don Torppa. Don was a prominent member of the Bonsai Society of the Carolinas, had a very fine personal bonsai collection and lurked for years around the edges of being a bonsai professional. His was very successful in Commercial Real Estate, however, so bonsai mostly remained a serious hobby for him. Don was interested in what was going on at the Arboretum and agreed to be a paid consultant to evaluate and appraise the bonsai collection, while overseeing the initial handling of the trees. He would also serve as my first bonsai instructor.

Don Torppa (left) and John Cook, working on the Staples’ bonsai collection in early 1993.

Don Torppa's consulting work began in early spring and continued on into the summer of 1993. In total, he visited the Arboretum three times to work with the collection and me, staying two days on each occasion. An incredible amount of work was accomplished. One important job was to identify the species of each specimen, because none of them were labeled. Some of the trees were easy to recognize but others were challenging, especially the tropical plants that weren't some type of ficus. Virtually all the trees Don deemed worth the trouble were repotted and trimmed, while he talked to me about what he was doing and why it was done. John Cook from the local club came for a couple sessions as well. He was someone to whom Don could hand a tree and give some instructions and trust to take care of business from there, because John had been doing bonsai for years. I was a novice, so the jobs I was given at first were not very challenging and I had to learn mostly by watching and listening. As someone who has always learned best by doing, this was not an overall satisfactory experience. My initial feelings about being drafted into bonsai service were not very optimistic. I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

That was how 1993 started, but the situation improved as the year went along. I came to a pretty good working relationship with Don Torppa. He was a colorful character and something of a schemer, but he knew a few things about bonsai and was adept at teaching. In each succeeding visit he gave me more responsibility and was always supportive of my progress. The more I was able to do with the plants the more appealing the prospect of doing bonsai became. Don also had numerous contacts among the east coast bonsai community, so he helped promote what the Arboretum was doing and helped me make useful connections. I was making connections otherwise, too. In April that year I went to study at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, and that opened up a whole new world.

When the Trees First Came