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.
Read MoreBonsai 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.
Read MoreAn 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.
Read MoreA natural tendency toward obstinacy was only one factor in my inability to let go of the maple and put the sorry tale down to experience. While I was fumbling around with all the difficulties caused by the bifurcated root structure, I was having much more success shaping the upper portion of the tree. This maple was one of my earliest efforts at naturalistic styling and I was pleased with its progression.
Read MoreIt might be supposed by people who don't know the backstory that this specimen was given the poetic name The Ogre in reference to the gnarly features of the deadwood, which can be read as a monstrous creature with one small, beady eye glaring out. But really it was named for the person who collected, styled and donated the little tree to our collection: Nick Lenz, the original wild man of American bonsai.
Read MoreThe beech trees used in this planting were grown from seed at the Arboretum in 1993 as part of the landscape nursery operation. When California bonsai artist Ben Oki visited us in 1996 we gave him some of these very young trees and asked him to make a group arrangement of them.
Read MoreThose little trees earn their keep at this time of year by providing a leafy green bonsai presence in the Baker greenhouse from December until the middle of May. People appreciate seeing the tropical bonsai looking so vibrantly alive while the temperate world outside, wrapped up in the somber cloak of dormancy, settles into the relative dullness of cold winter.
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