by Ogden Tanner

This article appeared in the “Smithsonian Magazine” in 1990. A number of our members have visited the National Arboretum and hopefully this summer I will be able to visit it also - ED

Behind the walls of the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Stillwater, Tom Chappell and 17 other members of the prison's bonsai club spend a couple of hours each night working on their collection of tiny, picturesquely twisted trees.

"It gets your mind off other things," says Chappell, who is serving 15 years to life for second-degree murder. His prize juniper, which he trained for two years, won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair last year; with the help of other ribbons earned by fellow inmates, the club swept the competition in the novice class. "Most of these guys are lifers with a history of big trouble," observes Sgt. Mike Hermerding of the prison staff. "But we've had surprisingly few problems since they got involved in bonsai."

When he isn't performing surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, orthopedist David Andrews can usually be found operating on his own collection of bonsai in Alpine, New Jersey. "I spend all day making crooked limbs straight, and all night making straight ones crooked," he quips. "Practicing bonsai has given me a certain amount of balance."

North of Memphis, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Billy Smith and his wife, Robbieanna, maintain 150 little trees in shallow trays: some they have acquired in their present form, but many others they have trained themselves, including a beautifully branching native buttonwood they think may be 300 years old. Smith originally became intrigued when he was flying back and forth to Japan on active duty 20 years ago and saw his first bonsai in a Tokyo department store. "There's something about bonsai, like flying, that's very quiet and peaceful," he says. "I've never tired of doing either."

A little tray-planted tree

Prisoners and professionals, retirees and housewives, more and more Americans have become fascinated by the ancient art of bonsai (pronounced "bone-sigh"), a Japanese word that means "tray planting."

Just how many Americans are bonsai buffs is anyone's guess, though they certainly number in the tens of thousands. There are upwards of a hundred organized bonsai clubs around the country - some 70 in California alone - and perhaps as many as a thousand small groups of individuals who meet informally at one another's homes. The movement is gaining international momentum as well. The first World Bonsai Convention was held last April in Japan, drawing 1,600 enthusiasts from 32 countries, including the United States, West Germany, Australia, India, Argentina and Peru.

Bonsai, admittedly, is not for everyone. Though a well-cared-for miniature tree is as healthy as - and often longer-lived than its larger forest brethren, some people are slow to get over the notion that all that twisting, wiring and pruning must constitute a form of torture, vaguely akin to the old Oriental custom of binding women's feet to make them small. Not a few people unfamiliar with the art are apt to regard the more contorted specimens as simply weird, even a bit grotesque.

"When you see bonsai for the first time, you either fall in love with it instantly or you don't; there's no middle way." says Chase Rosade, who studied bonsai in Japan, and teaches it to both beginners and experts at the Rosade Bonsai Studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania. "The people who do fall in love with it, however, find that they can escape in their imagination into a natural world in miniature. For a moment, a foot-high tree resembles a wind-tormented pine high on a mountain; a mound of moss becomes a green meadow; a group of seedlings evokes an entire forest."

In Japan, where religion teaches a reverence for nature, age and ancestors, bonsai is a highly respected art form, symbolizing the struggle of a tree against the forces of nature, growing in character as it grows older, much as a human being does. Moreover, in common with other Japanese artworks, such as scroll paintings and gardens, a good bonsai is not explicit down to the last detail; it is spare, abstract, impressionistic, inviting the observer to meditate, to project himself into the scene, to complete and interpret it in his own mind. In many Japanese homes, a favorite specimen is often brought indoors temporarily and placed in a tokonoma, a ceremonial alcove where it can be contemplated at leisure, perhaps with a decorative poetic scroll hanging behind it, and a small companion plant or other object completing the composition off to one side. The man of the house comes home after a frazzling day at the office and sits in front of this world in microcosm for five or ten minutes before dinner. "That's his martini," observes David Andrews. "He can imagine himself climbing a beautiful mountain, or walking quietly in the woods."

Though many women are attracted to bonsai in America, it seems to have its greatest allure for men who, according to suppliers of bonsai plants and materials, constitute the vast majority of their clients. This tradition, too, stems partly from Japan, where virtually all practitioners are male (and where ikebana, the art of flower arranging, is almost exclusively a female pursuit).

Not a few devotees talk about their plants as if they were children or pets, members of the family. One reason is the constant attention they need: growing in unnatural conditions in shallow containers, plants usually require daily watering and inspection, often a little pruning here and there, as well as occasional fertilizing, root trimming, and periodic repotting to keep them healthy and within bounds. Unlike watercolors or model airplanes, bonsai is not a hobby one can drop readily to go off on a trip. For those who can't persuade someone to baby-sit their plants, a number of bonsai nurseries around the country offer vacationing owners "boarding and grooming" services, much as kennels do for owners of prize poodles.

The challenge is not one that stops once you've put down your tools and stand back to admire the result. Unlike a sculpture or painting, a bonsai continues to grow, changing with the seasons and the years. Buds develop, shoots lengthen. In some species, flowers open, fruit appears, foliage turns color in fall. When the leaves drop, the architecture of a deciduous tree like a maple or beech is dramatically exposed, becoming an object of wonder in itself. "Once you're hooked on bonsai, you start looking at trees in the landscape with different eyes," says Robbieanna Smith. "You realize how much more beautiful a tree like a sycamore can become in winter, when the leaves aren't covering it and you can appreciate the trunk lines, the branches, the texture and colors of the bark. I find I have to buy an awful lot of right front tires, because when I drive along the street every day I see things that would make wonderful bonsai and I run right into the curb."

In Japan, bonsai are family heirlooms

Underlying the appeal for many converts is the mystery of working with something that is so small, so beautiful, so often old, yet so very much alive. While some bonsai in Japan, lovingly passed on from father to son as family heirlooms, are thought to have been living for 500 years or more, the question to a true believer is not so much the actual age of a plant as how old it looks. "It takes at least three generations to make a really good bonsai," says Johnny Chang, who displays a dozen or so of his 140 specimens in his Chinese restaurant in Greenwich, Connecticut, for diners to admire. Other practitioners find that they can achieve a feeling of age and dignity in a plant in as few as five or ten years. In any case, patience counts.

To create a bonsai out of a young nursery plant, an expert like Chase Rosade first looks for a tree trunk that is somewhat thicker at the base and tapering toward the top, a strong root system all around, and an interesting natural "movement" to the trunk and branches. The best time to shape a plant is in early spring, when it is vigorous and starting to put out new growth. Because the plant may be so full of sap that it is actually brittle, Rosade doesn't water it for a day or two, allowing it to become less turgid and thus less likely to snap if bent.

When he is ready to go to work, Rosade uses special bonsai scissors and pruning pincers to remove excess foliage and branches. He begins at the bottom, working upward so that roughly the lower third of the trunk is revealed. If the tree lends itself to the common "curved-trunk" style, he leaves one major branch to the right (or left); a second, shorter branch above the first, protruding to the other side; a smaller third branch above the second, pointing toward the back of the tree to give a feeling of depth. He avoids branches pointing awkwardly at the viewer except for the smallest ones at the top. "You want to open up the foliage so you can appreciate the structure of the tree - as the Japanese put it, to make 'spaces for the birds to fly through,' " he says.

On each main branch, Rosade shapes the foliage into a triangular or teardrop shape, thicker toward the trunk and tapering toward the tip; he also snips off shoots that point straight up or down, in order to achieve a flatter, layered look.

A rigidly straight trunk or a branch that angles upward may have to be wired into more pleasing lines characteristic of an older tree. Wiring, a temporary measure akin to putting braces on teeth, is done with soft copper or aluminum wire. Starting from the base, Rosade wraps the wire in a series of 45-degree turns toward the tip. After wiring, he gently bends the wood with both hands into the desired position, which the bent wire should hold until the wood takes on the new position permanently. On a particularly resistant limb, he may attach a guy wire to the trunk or pot to pull it into place.

Rosade then chooses a shallow bonsai tray with a depth of one to two times the diameter of the trunk at its base, and a length of about two-thirds the height of the tree. He covers the tray's drainage holes with small squares of nylon screening, then runs a wire down through one hole and up through another, leaving enough wire so that it can be tied over the root ball to hold the plant in place.

To bring the root system into balance with the much-reduced foliage, he removes as much as two-thirds of the soil and roots from the bottom, snipping off the heaviest roots so they will fit the limited space. He places the tree in the tray - usually off-center to balance its asymmetrical mass - on a layer of gravelly, quick-draining soil, then ties the wires over the root ball and fills in with finer soil.

The finished bonsai is then soaked for about ten minutes in a tray of water to which a commercial root stimulant containing vitamin B1 is added. To allow the tree to recover from its operation, it is set in a protected spot out of the sun and wind for a week, then gradually moved into full sun, where it will have to be watered an average of once a day. After a month, Rosade starts feeding his new bonsai a balanced liquid fertilizer in solution, applying it every two weeks until mid-October, when the plant slows down for a winter rest and will not require feeding until the following spring. At about the same time, when the training wires have had time to do their job, he removes them before they get embedded in the growing bark.

When freezing weather becomes likely, Rosade places the new bonsai (along with all the others in his considerable collection) in an enclosed, unheated area where it will remain cool and dormant, yet protected from severe temperatures and drying winter winds.

To maintain at a height of four feet or less a tree that would ordinarily grow to 50-100 feet may require creativity and patience, but it does not involve torture, horticulturists are quick to point out; plants have no central nervous system and thus cannot sense pain. Nor is it a question of starvation, which would soon sicken and kill the plant. A well-cared-for bonsai, in fact, gets ample water and nutrients (and is protected from the vicissitudes of nature, including insects and disease) with the result that it usually lives much longer than its cousins in the wild.

The main thing that keeps a bonsai small is careful pruning: reducing the total amount of its leaves and roots so that it simply cannot manufacture enough food to become any larger. Terminal buds at the tops of branches are constantly cut or pinched off, stimulating the plant to redirect energy to lower buds; these form shorter, lateral shoots and smaller leaves that give the plant a compact, bushier look. To keep top and bottom growth in healthy balance, a plant is periodically removed from its pot. Long thick roots are trimmed back, encouraging the growth of fine new feeder roots, and the plant is repotted in fresh soil.

Though its history is not precisely documented, the idea behind bonsai seems to have originated not in Japan but during the Han dynasty in China some 2,000 years ago, when artists began to fashion miniature landscapes in trays, and to grow flowers and small trees in pots. Buddhist monks brought examples of bonsai with them to Japan in the 12th century, believing that they were sacred objects ("verdant stairways to Heaven") that expressed a connection between God and mankind. At first the sole property of the samurai aristocracy, the notion gradually spread to the middle classes, becoming a widely accepted art form by the 1800s. It was first introduced in the West at an exposition in Paris in 1878, and later at an exhibition in London in 1909, where the curious little trees created a sensation.

Bonsai made its first appearance in the United States early in this century when Lars Anderson, Ambassador to Japan, brought home an impressive collection that was eventually donated to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston; along with others, his trees can still be seen there. Actual training of trees in this country, however, was confined to a handful of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. The real flowering of popular interest dates only from the years following World War II, when American servicemen who had been stationed in Japan brought back their discovery of bonsai.

Most bonsai today are based on five main styles codified by the Japanese-formal upright, curved trunk (the most common), slanting, cascade and what is called "literati," with a slender trunk and fewer branches, as well as variations with windswept or twisted trunks, trees grown in or over rocks, and multi-stemmed and group "forest" plantings, totaling more than 30 versions in all. While the majority of standard bonsai trees are from one to four feet tall, many enthusiasts also try their hand at shohin, a kind of mini bonsai using plants six inches high or less; or shito, featuring specimens that are barely three inches high, planted in pots not much bigger than a thimble, with a teaspoon of soil. While such dollhouse editions carry miniaturization to a fascinating extreme, they are even more demanding; they must be watered faithfully (as often as five or six times a day)and are often fertilized with a hypodermic syringe.

Growing in popularity, too, is another variant of bonsai called saikei, or "living landscape," which combines plants, rocks, mosses, tiny ferns, grasses and sand or fine gravel to create entire seashore, woodland or mountain scenes in realistic miniature. Finally, there is the allied art of suiseki, or "viewing stones," which uses no plants at all; it consists solely of individual rocks collected for their evocative shapes and patterns, and displayed as art objects in themselves.

In judging a bonsai, a connoisseur looks first for overall artistic effect. Paramount is a choice of style appropriate to the nature of the tree-one doesn't try to force an upright-growing redwood into a drooping cascade form, which is better suited to an old, gnarled pine clinging to a rocky mountainside. "A bonsai should never be trained into a shape that does not naturally become its species," says Yuji Yoshimura of Westchester County, New York, one of the first Japanese masters to teach bonsai to Americans, in the 1950s. "It should remain a forest tree, seen through the wrong end of a telescope."

While a presentable bonsai can be made out of an ordinary juniper bought for $5 at the neighborhood nursery (a favorite practice plant for beginners) outstanding older specimens shaped by skilled artists can command impressive prices, ranging up to $2,000 and occasionally as high as $25,000 (a fine container can be worth many thousands by itself). In Japan, where leading executives like the chairman of Honda Limited dabble in bonsai, much as wealthy Americans do in art or race horses, it is not unusual for an ancient tree of exceptional artistry to go for the equivalent of $200,000-300,000, and some have fetched more than $1 million. To protect such an investment, a wise collector generally leaves its care and feeding to a professional bonsai trainer, and has his prize delivered from the nursery only on special occasions so it can be admired by guests at his corporate headquarters or his home.

While Japanese styles and species remain classic standards for bonsai, in recent years a more Americanized version of the art has begun to emerge. Traditionally, bonsai makes use of temperate region plants native to the latitudes of Japan, particularly slow growing, long lived ones like junipers and pines, as well as deciduous ones like Japanese maples, gingkos and zelkovas. Almost all must be grown outdoors; they are brought inside to be enjoyed for only a day or two at a time (a fact that novices learn the hard way when they try to keep a new prize inside permanently, on a coffee table in a room with too much heat and not enough light).

Americans, with well heated homes and an affinity for houseplants, are increasingly broadening the field by using subtropical and tropical species that not only have their own distinctive appeal but thrive indoors in winter in the North. Species lending themselves to such use range from figs and English ivy to gardenias, camellias, bougainvilleas, acacias and bamboos, though care must be taken to provide particular species with the temperature, humidity and light levels they require.

Americans tend to be freer and more experimental in the way they style and train plants, using distinctive, native North American species, like Florida button-wood and California juniper (so beautifully twisted by nature that they draw raves from bonsai masters in Japan) as well as others with special character, such as ponderosa pine, redwood, bald cypress, American hornbeam and larch.

The finest of such trees are usually collected in the wild. Already old and well-shaped by the elements, a prize trophy often has the potential of becoming "instant bonsai," one that can be brought home and transformed into a masterpiece in a lot less time than a generation or two.

For a true aficionado, collecting can be the headiest aspect of the art, pursued with all the zeal of a big game hunter stalking his prey. Some of the best American larches, lovely trees with delicate tufts of needles, come from bogs in Nova Scotia or Michigan, where they are naturally dwarfed by acidic growing conditions and lack of nutrients. Still other sources include old fields or abandoned orchards, where cows have browsed on seedling trees (apples, crab-apples, junipers, beeches, elms) constantly pruning them over the years, so that one can find specimens that have gnarled trunks a foot in diameter but are only three feet high. More mundane for the alert collector are nurseries about to throw out imperfect or overgrown stock, which can be cut back and reshaped.

The prudent collector, of course, doesn't just go traipsing onto someone's property to help himself, but gets the owner's permission first. In the case of public property, such as a National Forest or areas administered by the Bureau of Land Management, permission is required by law and must be obtained from the local district office; a fee of $3-5 per tree is usually charged. Off-limits to collectors are National Parks and National Monuments, where no vegetation or wildlife can be removed except in special cases involving scientific research.

Among the most prized of Native American species are the twisted pines and junipers found growing in the mountains of the West. There is no more avid collector of them than Dan Robinson, who is also one of America's leading proponents of "freestyle" bonsai, which follows the artist's own rules rather than the classic Japanese ones.

Robinson, a boyish, well-muscled man of 50, with curly hair and a ready smile, alternates 24 hours on duty at the Bremerton Fire Department in Washington State (he often brings a bonsai to the firehouse to work on between alarms) with 48 hours off, which gives him ample time for his own landscape design business and a personal collection of more than 400 bonsai at his rustic lakeside home.

In search of stunted trees

On a recent tree-hunting expedition to the Front Range of the Rockies Robinson (who had been careful to get permission) and two longtime collecting companions (Larry Jacket, a high school physical education teacher from Denver and Felix Laughlin, a Washington, D.C lawyer) bumped over dirt roads in Robinson's pickup, scanning the foothills for outcroppings with crevices in which stunted pines and junipers are apt to grow. Each time they spotted a likely site; the excited hunters piled out of the truck and clambered after their quarry with crowbar, sledge, saw and long-handled pruning shears, along with a small hydraulic jack to wedge the rocks apart.

Digging, prying, severing unwanted roots and branches, they were able to get an easy specimen out of its stronghold in half an hour or so (harder ones took up to half a day) wrapping the roots in burlap to prevent drying and lugging their prize back to the truck and its trailer. If a particularly handsome tree proved difficult to move without endangering it, they excavated the part of the roots they could reach, and wrapped them in sphagnum moss and black plastic to encourage further growth. Then they noted the spot so they could return next year to cut the tree loose safely from its still buried roots and bring it out. The expedition was fruitful: after nine days, the pickup and trailer had been crammed with multiple loads for each collector, including 40 specimens that Robinson hauled home to Washington.

Robinson, who is considered somewhat of a maverick by conventiona bonsai fans (and on the leading edge of the art by others here and in Japan) creates compositions that reveal a deep respect for the nature of trees and are distinguished by an extraordinary sculptural energy. "Bonsai should be fun," he says. "I'd rather do a 'Wow!' bonsai, an American kind of bonsai, than a safe one that reverently follows Oriental traditions." He puts primary emphasis on the trunk of a tree, particularly the deadwood valued by many bonsai artists, which he often carves and hollows out. To create new foliage on the deadwood, Robinson implants a juniper whip in a groove cut along the length of the trunk, burying the juniper roots in the soil. When working with a live bark strip of a trunk, he simply grafts new growth directly onto the live part. One of his trees, a 160-year-old ponderosa pine, stands in a place of honor at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. He calls the tree, which has a stout but whimsically graceful look, "Jackie Gleason Dancing."

Also at the arboretum are the many trees of the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, which has become a Mecca for bonsai lovers in the United States. The main display, reached through a charming Japanese garden, is of 53 outstanding bonsai presented by the Nippon Bonsai Association of Japan to the American people for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. At the entrance to the exhibition stands a 190-year-old Japanese red pine (click here) donated by the Imperial Household; at the end is the granddaddy of the collection, a Japanese white pine more than 350 years old (click here), given by a family that had passed it down through many generations. (When its donor was invited to visit his gift in its new home, notes curator Bob Drechsler, he stood before it for a long time with tears in his eyes.) Nearby are 31 Penjing, Chinese versions of bonsai, donated by Yee-sun Wu, a Hong Kong businessman. To complete the picture and update the history of the art, the National Bonsai Foundation is raising funds from private donors toward a new American pavilion, which will display selections from a hundred outstanding bonsai contributed by North American artists. Reflecting the current diversity in styles and philosophies, the collection will eventually include a wide range of specimens that have a distinctly American look. Construction will soon be under way, with an opening date targeted for fall of next year.

Already on display is the centerpiece of the American collection, given by its creator, John Yoshio Naka of Los Angeles, after whom the new pavilion will be named. A commanding, four-foot high forest planting of bonsai trees Naka started creating 25 years ago; it is named Goshin (Guardian of the Spirit). "Alice and I have 11 grandchildren; Goshin has 11 trees," he observes with a smile.

Naka, born in Colorado and educated in Japan before going into the landscaping business on the West Coast after World War II, has probably done more than any other person to spread the understanding of bonsai throughout America and the rest of the world. A small, gentle man of innate modesty, he continues to travel tirelessly at the age of 75, giving lessons to novices and experts alike.

"What I like about bonsai is that it has a beginning but no end," says Naka. "A bud today becomes a branch tomorrow. It is like searching for the rainbow's end; the farther it is pursued, the farther away it is. There are no borders in bonsai. The dove of peace flies to palace as to humble house, to young as old, to rich or poor. So does the spirit of bonsai."