The Carolina Bonsai Expo ran for twenty four consecutive years. By the time of the final Expo in 2019, the event had established itself as one of the leading bonsai shows in the United States and was internationally known. For many years the Expo was The North Carolina Arboretum’s single largest event of the year as measured by visitation. At the time of this writing, the success of the Expo as an annual horticultural event at the Arboretum has yet to be surpassed.

Starting out, however, the Carolina Bonsai Expo was a humble affair. I had an idea that a bonsai show at the Arboretum would generate a favorable public response, resulting in greater visibility for the young bonsai program and, hopefully, enhanced status for bonsai within the institution itself. The Arboretum had already hosted a few horticulturally themed shows. These events were created and organized by outside entities like the Rhododendron Society, then staged at the Arboretum. We didn’t have a horticultural show of our own, one that the Arboretum created and organized in-house. I thought that was something we ought to have, surely would have eventually, and there was real attraction in the idea of bonsai getting there first.

Once I had a workable strategy for what a big bonsai event at the Arboretum might look like, I wrote it out as a proposal and then sent it up the chain of command as a memorandum, which is how it was done back in the day:

It took some audacity to make this proposal. At the time I was still way down near the bottom of the institutional hierarchy, still only allowed to do bonsai work part-time, but I was feeling my oats. Many positive experiences had come my way since assuming responsibility for the bonsai collection and I felt like I was riding a wave of momentum. I had Dr. Creech encouraging me at every turn and Mr. Yoshiumura filling my head with big ideas. I had visited several prominent bonsai societies in the Carolinas and presented programs, and talking to people in these clubs had given me the impression they would be receptive to the idea of participating in a bonsai event organized by the Arboretum.

As it happened, there was already a big event at the Arboretum being planned for 1996 that I didn’t know about. Construction of the core garden area was well underway and big festivities were in the works for when that project would be unveiled to the public. The anticipated opening of the new gardens was sometime in spring of 1996 and all institutional resources and attention would be focused on that, so there couldn’t be a bonsai event then. The door wasn’t closed, though. It was agreed that if the date of the proposed bonsai event was changed to later in the year, I would be allowed to do it. Spring was my first choice for the show, but autumn wasn’t a bad alternative.

The core garden dedication event proved to be a blessing in an unanticipated way. Because the new gardens were such a long anticipated big deal — these were the first formal gardens built at the Arboretum — the preparations for their unveiling commanded all the administration’s attention. That is to say, once consent was given to move forward on my proposed bonsai show as long as it happened at some time other than spring, everyone went back to planning for the garden dedication event and didn’t give the bonsai show a second thought. I was pretty much left to my own devices with surprisingly little oversight.

The next step was to solicit the participation of the bonsai clubs. I had compiled a list of all the known bonsai clubs in North and South Carolina and a contact for each, and now I sent them all a brief introductory letter and a questionnaire. The primary question concerned the club’s interest in participating in a bonsai show if the Arboretum was to have one. This business was conducted through the US Mail so it took awhile to get all the responses, but upon receiving enough positive feedback I wrote and sent out an official invitation:

Once I had received confirmation from the clubs, I kept them close in the ensuing months by continuing to correspond with them. Some of the people I was now depending on were strangers to me and even the ones I had met in-person were not people I knew well. I felt it necessary to make certain everyone remembered their commitment. I also needed to keep relevant information flowing to the clubs so they’d know what was expected of them, which required encouraging club contacts to pass the news along to club membership. Much of the stuff being relayed was about operational matters like where to go and when to be there, but there was also messaging about what kind of show we intended to have. When I say we I mean the Arboretum, but I was making these decisions myself and assuming institutional support. Here is an excerpt from one of the epistles sent to the clubs as the time for the show drew closer:

Proclamations like those above were meant to engineer the Expo’s personality, laying down guidelines for what type of event we would create. The strategy proved successful. The first Expo managed to be conducted in a spirit of congeniality and cooperation among a fairly large group of people who mostly didn’t know each other. Everyone seemed to buy into the premise of the Expo being primarily about promoting awareness and appreciation of bonsai, putting aside, for the most part, any egotistic or elitist impulses. The positivity of that earliest effort set the tone for all the Expo’s to follow, and a genuine sense of camaraderie among all the participating entities grew out of it.

While I worked quietly behind the scenes getting the bonsai event sorted out, preparations for the core gardens dedication were intensifying. That affair became an all-consuming, stressful, maximal undertaking for the Arboretum staff, carrying on right up to the big day, which had to be pushed back a time or two. When the dedication event was finally over, there was a period of deflation and recovery for all who were most wrapped up in the production of it. When time passed and business returned to more normal footing, I expected the institutional focus would shift to the big bonsai event being planned for autumn. But that didn’t happen. I was well content to be left alone to manage the show, but there were matters that were outside my knowledge and abilities with which I was going to need some help. I had no experience staging a big event before, at the Arboretum or anywhere else.

Eventually I made a request for assistance, asking if anyone was available to help with clerical matters and organizing institutional resources. In a stroke of the greatest good fortune, I was connected with a woman on staff named Cindy Blankenship. Cindy had been hired as a secretary by Dr. Creech back when he briefly served as the Arboretum’s interim director, making her the very first hire of an institution no one had heard of at the time. Cindy was something of a combination receptionist, secretary and office manager when we first hooked up on producing the Expo. She also knew where everything was at the Arboretum and how everything worked. We made a good team, getting the job done with as little fuss as possible and having a lot of laughs along the way.

The first Expo was not so stressful, but two unknowable factors weighed on my mind leading up to the event. The first concerned the clubs that were signed on to participate — would they actually show up? I had dedicated time and effort to building relationships with the various organizations and done everything I could to establish and maintain communication. Never having worked with any of these people before, however, I couldn’t know if they’d honor their word until they arrived on Friday evening and set up their displays. They all did.

My other concern was about public turnout — what if we put on a bonsai show and no one came to see it? Publicity for this event amounted to announcing it in the Arboretum’s monthly educational program notice and issuing a press release to the local media. The Arboretum was still early in its institutional development, not so well known in the community, with only a fraction of the Membership base that currently exists. It was a leap of faith to believe there would be enough outside interest to make a crowd. The fear of a disinterested public also turned out to be unfounded. Visitation for the bonsai show was considerably greater than that enjoyed by the garden dedication event in spring.

When people arrived at the Visitor Education Center to see the little trees they were given a program guide to the weekend’s activities. That guide serves as a good account of what the first Expo had to offer:

The North Carolina Arboretum Society was scheduled to have its annual meeting around the same time as the Expo weekend that year, so it was decided that giving Members an exclusive preview of the show could serve as special benefit of attending. This led to a professional photographer being hired to record the event. The few images I have from the first Expo were the work of that now forgotten photographer, and I’m thankful they exist.

The 1996 Carolina Bonsai Exposition was roundly pronounced a success. The participating clubs were excited to have had such an impressive venue for their trees and greatly enjoyed the opportunity to meet people from other clubs sharing the same interest. The educational programs were well attended, offering a first exposure to bonsai for many of the attendees. The bonsai vendors we invited to be part of the event did well with their sales, while providing a bonsai marketplace for people who did not have one otherwise. The public turned out in numbers significant enough to make a good impression on the Arboretum’s administration, and everyone seemed to have a good time. There was general agreement among all involved that the thing should happen again.

As previously stated, the first Expo was a humble affair; looking back now it seems there wasn’t much to it. Yet the importance of the show’s success can hardly be overstated. The success of the first effort allowed all the other Expo’s to happen, and in terms of the bonsai program at the Arboretum, nothing was more positively impactful than the Carolina Bonsai Expo.

To be continued…

The Carolina Bonsai Expo - Part 1, First Time Around