What matters more, and the reason for detailing the history of this specimen, is the degree to which it has evolved. More than simply the product of normal aging, this particular black pine transformed the way it did because the person who grew it over the course of that time experienced an evolution of aesthetic sensibility.

In the case of this dwarf white pine, I decided it was not worth undoing what had been accomplished because I could not think of a better tree to make out of what already existed. If this bonsai were a maple or hornbeam, it could be pruned back hard to nothing much more than a trunk and a new design could be constructed from the resulting regrowth. Pines are different.

This homegrown bonsai specimen stands out in autumn with foliage the color of a fire truck, a feature attributable to the tree's genetic inheritance as a red maple. It is large, standing just under thirty-inches in height, with a diameter of eight-inches just above the surface roots. That is big for a bonsai but small for a mature red maple, a consequence of the environmental impact of being cultivated as a bonsai.

Whatever their appearance and however they may be judged aesthetically, bonsai of this sort have the essence of some greater identity due to particular circumstances. This something extra may be a remarkable story involving the individual bonsai itself, or, as is the case with our dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), the added interest may pertain to the species of plant from which the bonsai is made.

Faith is required, along with a bit of imagination, to see past the moment and focus on an outcome that is perhaps years away. That visionary aspect of bonsai design was another of Mr. Yoshimura's strengths. I should add that my decision to take a chance and try for something different, to be creative and innovative in my thinking, was also a product of Mr. Yoshimura's influence. Those were traits he stressed to me when I studied with him. I was paying attention.

In the four years since the demonstration that brought them together, the beech and hemlock did well and both attained an agreeable degree of ramification in their branching. It is worth pointing out that even if a person is persnickety about larger sized leaves on deciduous bonsai trees, half the year there is no problem at all. American beech has distinctive leaf buds, too, so the winter look of this planting was particularly pleasing to me.

Even after removing the dead beech tree, I did not do much with the hemlock for a while. I spent the time taking care of other plants while keeping an eye on what remained of Mr. Yoshimura's tree and thinking about what to do next. I had always seen those trees as being subsidiary to some larger element: first the original primary trunk of the hemlock and later the American beech that replaced it. Now it was time to evaluate them on their own. 

Most tray landscapes depict generic scenes from nature, but the possibility exists to have them represent more specific, real-life places. The challenge in doing this is finding a key feature of a given place that can be worked into the design of a tray landscape, suggesting the identity of the place being represented.

In bonsai, American hornbeam is more commonly used than hop-hornbeam. The reason for this is somewhat mysterious, given both species work equally well for the purpose. This disparity is reflected in the Arboretum's bonsai collection, where we have numerous American hornbeam specimens but only one hop-hornbeam. The one hop-hornbeam specimen we have is substantial, however, and we've had it for a long time.

There was a big pot made of redwood, the kind you might use for growing a tree out on a patio, and jutting up out of the soil in the pot was a piece of wood like an upside-down baseball bat. Mr. Staples came along so I asked him if the trunk in a pot was supposed to go with us. “Yeah,” he said, “That goes.” I bent to pick it up. “Be careful with that,” he said, “I paid five hundred dollars for that stick!”

When you look at an old bonsai you might never guess the history of it. For example, we have in the Arboretum's bonsai collection a large podocarpus (Podocarpus macrophyllus), which we can reasonably surmise to be around seventy years old. To look at it you might well recognize that it looks aged, however nothing in its appearance will give you reason to think our podocarpus grew up at a correctional facility. But it did.

There is another Graveyard Fields. It is considerably smaller than the one off the Parkway but much more accessible, and it is never crowded there unless you want it to be in your imagination. The Graveyard Fields I'm talking about now is a miniature representation of the real place and it can be seen on just about any visit to the Arboretum's bonsai garden when little trees are on display.

The idea of using a wooden planter for a tray landscape had somehow become appealing to me early on. The box used for the Graveyard Fields planting was a first attempt at such, and provided lessons that helped improve the wooden planters we subsequently built for use. After ten years in the wooden container, however, it seemed Graveyard Fields was ready for a modification to its look.

There was a lot of experimentation going on in those days. I tried many different techniques as a means of self-education, and some of these efforts succeeded while others failed. Starting new Amur maple bonsai from cuttings was a success. Starting a new Amur maple bonsai from a cut-back stump was a success. Putting these maples together as a group planting was also successful, although there was a hitch in the process that I didn't recognize until later.

Bonsai that are very big, or very small, or very old, tend to be the kind of bonsai that attract the most attention. It is their novelty that makes them so appealing. But the fact is that most bonsai do not fit into any of those three categories, and so it should come as no surprise that most of the bonsai in the Arboretum's collection don't fit into those categories either.

An acquaintance back in the late 1990s gave me a little red maple (Acer rubrum) in a pint-size pot. It had been grown from a cutting taken from a tree that exhibited outstanding autumn color. Although this very young plant offered absolutely nothing to suggest it would make a good bonsai, I thought I would aim it that way because in those days every plant I came across was a likely candidate for that purpose.

The American hornbeam had previously been part of a different Arboretum landscape planting, but was removed because it had a more noticeably crooked trunk than the other trees with which it had been planted. The rejected hornbeam was in a storage area for several years when I noticed it and asked about its availability. The same crooked trunk that was previously seen as a flaw made the tree attractive for its new assignment.

This small area is referred to as the Upper Level Entry Garden. It is very much part of the bonsai garden and it is maintained in the same manner. That means the Scots pine is pruned and shaped in a way that gives it an appearance suggestive of a bonsai.

Gardens are beautiful because there is beauty in life. There is more than that, though. It is the inescapable fact of existence as we know it, that where there is life there must inevitably be death. Life feeds on death, on all levels from the microscopic to the largest manifestations of creative energy.

This little feature works familiar bonsai territory — the suggestion, in simple strokes, of something greater, calling upon the imagination of the viewer to make the connection. In the mind's eye of the visitor standing at the railing, the little splash of water may bring them back to the seclusion of a forest retreat.

It takes a little imagination for a water feature like Mountain Spring to mentally transport a viewer to some other, more natural watering hole in the forest. But even if the viewer has no imagination, they can still appreciate just the sight and sound of water cascading over the face of a big, craggy rock and into a pool. That experience is elemental and accessible. It's another matter altogether when the water feature is conceptual — that is, when the water feature doesn't actually have any water in it.

I'm a solitary sort of person, strongly inclined towards quiet introspection, with an unfortunate tendency to be cranky in social situations. I might be tempted to say I'd like my job even more if all it involved was working with the plants, were it not for a certain mysterious phenomenon that occurs on a regular basis.

Even without the little trees, the jewels at the heart of the garden’s identity, the place enchants. People slow down as they walk through, they speak more softly and look more carefully. The bonsai garden is not large but there is much to see in the layers of detail contained within. The second stage of spring in the bonsai garden begins on the second Saturday in May — World Bonsai Day — when the bonsai are returned to their benches and the garden is made whole.

The 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.

The time leading up to the big weekend is a strange mix. There's stress because there's demand and a deadline, and the closer the deadline gets the more stress there is. The deadline is a worry, but that which must be done by the deadline is very enjoyable and really shouldn't be rushed, and therein lies the problem. All the high-value, creative pruning work an avid pruner could wish for comes due all at once, with a deadline. 

Although our trees are much beloved by the visitors who come to see them, they are nonetheless scrutinized and critically evaluated every day, because they are being shown. They are indeed presented as art objects, but they grow right where they are displayed and are not divorced from their natural context. The work done to enhance their aesthetic appeal can never be in conflict with their horticultural needs.

There are times when the growing season feels never-ending, like the pruning and watering and close monitoring of the display trees and the garden landscape will go on forever. Nothing goes on forever, though. Summer is where the action is. Summer is alive and vibrant, demanding and exhausting. This was the thirty-first summer of bonsai at the Arboretum, the eighteenth summer in the bonsai garden. It was a good one, and now it's officially over.

The incredible character of these naturally miniaturized specimens lies somewhere at the heart of the bonsai impulse. Nature has always produced such trees in environmental extremes all over the world. Humans have always found something in the nature of these trees that speaks to us, compelling us to a more philosophic state of mind. They inspire us.

The experience is suggestive, not limited by any need for what the viewer is looking at to be literally "old." The plants are shaped to look like they are old, to mimic the effects of age, done in a way convincing enough that the illusion prompts a response similar to what people would experience if they were in the presence of full-sized old trees of great character. Bonsai art, like all other art, works on our minds at the crossroads of memory and imagination.

On a mostly forgotten day in February, 1995, the telephone in my office rang. When I picked it up I heard Mr. Yoshimura's voice on the other end of the line. It was a happy surprise to hear his voice, because we hadn't spoken since my study visit with him in early January.

Nine thirty the next morning I was at the hotel and Mr. Yoshimura was not waiting in the lobby. I stopped at the front desk and asked the woman working there what room Mr. Yoshimura was in. She told me the number then asked if I wanted her to call his room and let him know I was there. "No," I said. "He's expecting me."

We talked easily enough. Mr. Yoshimura's new surroundings were newer, cleaner and less cluttered than his home in Briarcliff Manor had been, and it felt different encountering him there. One thing hadn't changed, though — he still spoke to me in riddles sometimes.

When the Arboretum accepted the unsolicited donation of a bonsai collection and I was offered the job of caring for the little trees, I tried to turn down the assignment. I was happy doing what I was doing at the time, which was most often manual labor out on the Arboretum property. We were outside most of the time, working on our own with more than four hundred wooded acres to keep us busy, and we rarely saw anyone else all day.

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. 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.

When 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.

Don was formulating a plan to have me further my education by studying with a well-known bonsai professional who was a friend and associate of his. When my horticultural mentor Dr. Creech caught wind of this he immediately stepped in and made arrangements for me to go to Washington DC to study with bonsai curator Bob Drechsler. Dr. Creech was insistent that this be done and he pulled all the strings to make it happen.

He didn't crack this like an obvious joke. He said it straight faced and then went about his business. This was one of several instances during the program where Mr. Yoshimura projected what I took to be an iconoclastic tendency. He was conservative in his appearance, precise and formal in manner, but seemed rebellious in his attitude. At the conclusion of the program I turned to Janet and said, "What a dangerous old man!"

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 DC 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.

In 1994, even as I was working toward the goal of a regional bonsai community with The North Carolina Arboretum at its center, I was trying to accelerate my personal bonsai learning curve. Word reached me early in the year that Yuji Yoshimura was going to be in Charlotte, doing a workshop program for the Bonsai Society of the Carolinas. Ever since meeting Mr. Yoshimura at the convention the year before I had been trying to figure out how to pursue the tantalizing offer of personalized instruction with him.

The time has come for me to talk about Yuji Yoshimura. His name has appeared repeatedly in this Journal, because his influence on me — and, through me, on the Arboretum's bonsai identity — has been profound. But I have not yet told the story of the experiences with him that set my bonsai thinking on such a fateful course.

As the new year began in 1959, thirty-seven-year-old Yuji Yoshimura began teaching bonsai classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He'd arrived in America laden with all the bonsai materials needed because they would not be otherwise available. This amounted to more than a ton of baggage, and the whole operation must have required prodigious planning and organization.

In writing about my experience with Mr. Yoshimura, I am looking back over a span of nearly thirty years— long enough ago that some significant changes have occurred in how we live everyday life. Perhaps greatest among them is the revolution wrought by advances in electronic communication.

In January of 1995 I traveled to Briarcliff Manor, New York, for a three-day study session with Mr. Yuji Yoshimura. Shortly after my return, I wrote an account of the experience and submitted it to Arboretum administration to communicate the value of what I had learned. What follows is an unedited transcript of that report.

Mr. Yoshimura loaded my slides into the projector's carousel then started projecting the images onto a small screen, also crammed into the room. Here my lessons began. As each tree's image was thrown up on the screen, Mr. Yoshimura would study it briefly and then begin a critique.

Mr. Yoshimura's teaching style was direct. He spoke declaratively and took pains to be exact in his statements. He expressed himself with authority that arose from an absolute command of his subject, acquired over an entire lifetime spent immersed in the art of miniature trees and landscapes.

When Mr. Yoshimura wasn't preparing me for the future, he was looking back over the decades of his own past, trying, I think, to discern why things went the way they did. He spoke of episodes from all different phases of his life, from the distant days of his youth up to the most recent years.

I had brought along three ceramic tray containers — low-profile, good quality Japanese stoneware ovals, the kind traditionally used for forest plantings. Mr. Yoshimura looked at those a moment, then said, "Come with me!" At this he became animated to a surprising degree, scurrying in short, rapid steps toward the greenhouse. I followed.

Even today I can't think of a great many technical tips I can say for certain came to me from Mr. Yoshimura. He contributed a good deal of information in that regard, but it all gets blended in with things I learned elsewhere, before and after my time with him. The real gold of my Yoshimura experience was in all the stuff that perplexed me at the time.

I had to actively advocate for bonsai's place within the Arboretum. Bonsai was still in the institutional position of being a curious side venture, an experimental anomaly, and nothing like a full-fledged program in its own right. I was no curator then. I was allowed to refer to myself as the bonsai caretaker for public relations purposes, but that was an unofficial title.

It amazed me that people were so generous. Their only motivation, so far as I could see, was to be helpful. They were supporting a new arboretum that was trying to start a new public bonsai collection, and if anything they had could be of use in that effort, they were happy to give it to us.

On a mostly forgotten day in February, 1995, the telephone in my office rang. When I picked it up I heard Mr. Yoshimura's voice on the other end of the line. It was a happy surprise to hear his voice, because we hadn't spoken since my study visit with him in early January.

Nine thirty the next morning I was at the hotel and Mr. Yoshimura was not waiting in the lobby. I stopped at the front desk and asked the woman working there what room Mr. Yoshimura was in. She told me the number then asked if I wanted her to call his room and let him know I was there. "No," I said. "He's expecting me."

We talked easily enough. Mr. Yoshimura's new surroundings were newer, cleaner and less cluttered than his home in Briarcliff Manor had been, and it felt different encountering him there. One thing hadn't changed, though — he still spoke to me in riddles sometimes.

Even after years of pouring through books and magazines studying countless pictures of the great aged bonsai from Japan, nothing could have prepared me for the marvel of standing before the living trees themselves. All of them were apparently in perfect health, meticulously groomed, planted in exquisite containers, and everything I saw looked old.

From Ryoanji we walk another fifteen or twenty minutes to Kinkakuji Temple, another truly outstanding site. The gardens are beautiful, but the real highlight is a golden temple, three stories high, sitting above a large pond that reflects the image. It's fantastic, dreamlike. I shoot a million pictures, but it's unlikely that I capture on film the shock of seeing such an amazingly wondrous thing for the first time.

Now, twenty-five years later and with the advantage of hindsight, there are certain elements of my Japan experience that I recognize as having had more importance than previously acknowledged. It is time to shine some light on these matters.

The bonsai professional had been taking the Englishwoman and her husband on a tour of the professional's bonsai garden. The professional introduced the curator to his English guests, explaining to the guests that the curator was in charge of a public bonsai collection in the United States and had come to Japan to study.

Containerization of plants is a remarkable phenomenon that few people ever think about because it's been done forever and the practice is so widespread and common. The discovery that a plant might be taken out of its natural context, introduced to an artificial environment and kept alive and thriving over a prolonged period was revolutionary.

Those pots were made in Japan or China and their character was part of the whole “Ancient Art of Bonsai” package. In the beginning this was not a problem. The desirability of producing bonsai that adhered to a certain conventionally approved form was only another of the rules in a game I was learning to play. After some time, however, an unanticipated dilemma arose.

Last night you read how the hurricane would land on the Gulf coast of Florida, then travel north-northwest through Georgia and South Carolina before arriving in western North Carolina. There would be lots of rain, the forecast said, maybe as much as twenty inches. There would be high winds too.

The heavy rain continued the rest of the afternoon, then all through the evening and all through the night without letting up. Somewhere in the darkness, as most people slept, the wind got up and started moving around, making itself known with murderous force. When morning came the damage that had occurred overnight gradually revealed itself.

From that low beginning, an entity seeking to recover must first endure and summon the will to go on. It must suffer the defeat but fight back, and persist in the struggle for however long it takes. Forever after, such an entity bears the stamp of the ordeal, for better or worse.

In this part of the world, to be out in the woods in autumn is to know something of the sublime. More than a mere colorful delight for the eyes, there is a spirit in autumn that reaches deep into memory to massage an aching place of melancholy acceptance. Autumn out in nature is like free therapy.

January is wintertime, generally cold and sometimes bitterly so, but there is something fresh and clean in the crisp austerity of a cold January day. This is the heart of the dormant season for temperate plants, but it is by no means a dull or dead time of year.

A certain ephemeral effect that occurs only once every year can often be observed in February, especially toward the end of the month and in lower elevations. It is a small thing, a quiet thing, a detail that has to be looked for if it is to be noticed. But it is a heartening thing, a promising thing, a reminder that life ebbs and flows and the flowing is soon to begin.

Naming March in honor of a mythological being who embodied both growth and devastation is entirely appropriate. This month may see the first tender young sprouts of green life emerging from fertile soil, but it may also see those same sprouts freeze and turn into dark brown slime a few days later. March is fickle. What's behind the door — the lamb or the lion?

In 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.

May 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.

If April is the time of horticultural anxiety and May is when the big green wave hits, June finds us engaged on all fronts, managing best as possible to stay atop a situation where life is surging in every square inch of the natural world. The plants are growing with greater energy than at any other time of year.

It all starts with the energy of the sun and in July the energy is free flowing and the sun is beating down hot. The beginning of July finds us in the middle of the calendar year, and smack dab in the middle of the great cycle of life. July also finds those of us who care for the Arboretum's bonsai and bonsai garden out working in the sun, dealing with the on-the-ground reality of summer.

Despite the heat the plants are still growing. Some bonsai have already been pruned half a dozen or more times this year, but they are still growing and will need to be pruned again. Grow and cut and grow and cut and grow and cut. We practice what can be thought of as "pruning from the outside." That is, we are focused on appearances.

For those of us in the bonsai game, September brings relief in two critical areas of concern: watering needs and rampant plant growth. Through the heat and glare of summer nearly every bonsai needed water nearly every day that it didn't rain; as we move into September there will be days when just a few plants here and there need "touching up" and there will be time to do a little catching up.

As a grower of ornamental plants, I welcome October. Right now, a good many of the plants I grow look worn out, their leaves spotted and dull. Soon, though, they will look briefly spectacular, ablaze in an array of seasonal color: purplish red into orange and rust, pale yellow into mustard and gold. Ours is a diverse bonsai collection that abounds in deciduous species and we can put on a great show in October.

November is a busy month in the world of bonsai here at the Arboretum, and for us the activity still has everything to do with the impending arrival of winter. Bonsai are still on display in the garden at the start of the month and will remain so until sometime near the month's end. Then the benches will be cleared off and the bonsai put into their winter quarters.

December's toil sets the stage for all that must be done in the next few months to prepare for another year of beauty and abundance. During the growing season no effort is spared to keep the garden looking lovely, and during the dormant season the goal is just the same. It is a different sort of lovely than you might find in May or July, but those of us who appreciate living in a temperate zone find serenity in its structural simplicity.

The 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.

There 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.

No bonsai is created in a day. This particular maple has been years in the making and the session it goes through today is just another step along a path, another increment working off the increments that preceded it and setting up the increments that will follow.

After the exhausting verbosity of the black pine articles, readers of this Journal will perhaps be relieved to find there are relatively few words to read in this latest entry. There is, however, a video to watch, and in it the verbosity will come to you in a different format. The “River of Dreams” planting is a favorite among those who visit the bonsai garden any time it is on display, and even more so if it happens to be flowering at the time.

In Creating a Tray Landscape, the latest in our five-part docuseries, Arthur again takes a landscape from inspiration to completion. He creates a new planting featuring a lone weathered hornbeam and woody shrubs assembled with sculptural rocks on a natural stone slab. It makes for a scene evocative of the craggy Southern Appalachian highlands.

One truth learned by being observant and studying the ways of nature is that some parts of it line up with human desires and interests and some don't, and this is particularly true as regards farming and gardening. Those living beings in nature that facilitate the human impulse to cultivate plants we refer to as "garden beneficials." Those that work against our objectives we refer to as "garden pests."

It’s often our tendency when faced with a plant that looks unhealthy to reflexively think, What can I spray on it? One of the greatest dangers inherent in the use of chemical pesticides is that they are relatively cheap and easily available to anyone, regardless of the competence, intelligence or sanity of the buyer. These are dangerous and often lethal substances that can be purchased in quantity at the nearest big-box hardware store.

Remember the adage that goes: "As the twig is bent so the tree is inclined"? It's an old saying, originally penned by poet Alexander Pope in 1732, and in full goes this way: "'Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."

Three Asian species — Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), trident maple (Acer buergerianum) and Amur maple (Acer ginnala) — are all considered excellent for bonsai use. Why not red maple, which is abundantly available in Western North Carolina? The answers I heard from bonsai people I asked were so emphatically negative I became leery of even asking.

The little red maple trees in the tray landscapes grew and presented a set of options with the multitude of parts they produced. In shaping them I relied entirely on the cut-and-grow method, using no training wire. With a pair of scissors I went about imagining life stories for the landscape trees, making choices as to what parts were lost and what path the canopy branches followed in their unending quest for sunlight.