I forgot that I was looking at little Chinese elms growing in a shallow container and instead imagined them to be big buckeyes and yellow birches growing among the boulders on a windblown ridgeline. The tray landscape looked that believable to me. This seems implausible even as I write it.
Read MoreThe telling of this particular tree's story should make one point plainly clear: It takes time to build a bonsai. Woody plants, even vigorous growers like American elms, develop at a rate most people find rather slow. On top of that the ability level of the person attempting to do the training of the plant has to be taken into account, and then come the hazards of chance along the way. Many plants are aimed for a bonsai future, but few actually make it.
Read MoreWhen I found a lone American elm growing in a small plastic pot among the excess plants in the Arboretum's nursery, it had immediate appeal. The idea of making a bonsai out of a species so well known and badly troubled seemed a novelty, and at the very least it gave me the opportunity to protect this one individual tree. Though nothing about that particular elm, little more than a stick in a pot, suggested it would in any way make a good bonsai.
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