In Memoriam: Abe Shinzo, September 21, 1956–July 8, 2022

The National Bonsai Foundation extends its deepest condolences to the loved ones of Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and to the people of Japan at this sad and difficult time.  Mr. Abe was the longest-serving prime minister of Japan and a very faithful friend to both the United States and democracy throughout the world.  The news of his assassination on July 8, 2022 is a truly tragic and shocking loss. 

Mr. Abe had a special connection to the U.S. National Arboretum’s National Bonsai & Penjing Museum and the NBF, starting from when the Museum opened in 1976.  The Museum opened with a gift of fifty-three trees from the people of Japan to honor the United States’ bicentennial and celebrate peace between the two nations. These trees, the “original gift,” occupy a special place in the Museum’s history, and many remain on display today. One tree, a dwarf Japanese maple, was donated by the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Shintaro Abe, Mr. Abe’s father. 

The Museum was also honored in 2019 to host Mrs. Akie Abe, Mr. Abe’s wife, during her visit to Washington, DC when she toured the Museum alongside the First Lady. It was a privilege then to share with her the tree that her father-in-law had donated, and the Museum continues to be proud to display it for the public at this time.

Bonsai Around the World: The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Japan

A panoramic view of the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum’s bonsai garden in May. All photos courtesy of Omiya. 

In August 2019, the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum established a historic Sister Museum partnership with the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Saitama City, Japan. For this edition of Bonsai Around the World, the National Bonsai Foundation is sharing the history and details of Omiya’s collections and staff members. 

We had the pleasure of speaking with one of Omiya’s curators, Dr. Fumiya Taguchi, who first learned about bonsai while receiving a doctorate in Japanese art history – specifically picture scrolls and ukiyo-e prints, a genre of Japanese art popular from the 17th to 19th centuries.

Taguchi had very little knowledge of the art form until one of his mentors, who became the first director of the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, recommended that Taguchi take a test for a curator position at Omiya. He was hired as a curator in 2009 when the museum was first opening – his first true introduction to the art form. 

“I remember I was worried about what I could research because bonsai was an unknown field to me,” Taguchi said. 

He quickly became fascinated by, and still dedicates time to, exploring bonsai history from the perspective of Japanese art history. Taguchi loves to delve into how people have thought about, created, described and spread bonsai throughout decades of bonsai appreciation.

“Bonsai is the creation by human hands of the ideal form of a natural tree living in the deep mountains,” he said. “Since ancient times, East Asians have believed that, through bonsai, they can transcend the mundane world and immerse themselves in the free world of nature while remaining at home. In other words, bonsai is a symbol of spiritual freedom.”

A Japanese White Pine named “Higurashi” in the decoration room

Omiya’s extensive collection contains an impressive 125 bonsai pieces and grass bonsai, 342 bonsai pot and tray displays, 69 suiseki pieces, 74 table pieces, 174 hanging scrolls and ukiyo-e prints and 57 historical materials. 

Many bonsai are displayed in the museum’s indoor permanent exhibition hall along with suiseki, hanging scrolls, and nine seats, including traditional Zashiki decorations that change each week. About 60 bonsai are periodically displayed in the outdoor bonsai garden, while others are maintained in a backyard. Non-bonsai collections are found in a separate exhibition hall. 

One of Omiya’s most treasured bonsai is a Japanese white pine called “Higurashi” estimated to be 450 years old and in training since 1933. The pine has been passed down through 11 owners, is the most famous bonsai in Japan and is the symbol of the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum. 

Another famous Omiya bonsai is an ezo spruce named “Todoroki.” The spruce was collected on Kunashiri Island in Hokkaido in 1931 by Tomekichi Kato and his son Saburo Kato, the bonsai master known as the father of World Bonsai Day and one of the bonsai artists who opened Omiya Bonsai Village. The Kato duo’s spruce is estimated to be 1,000 years old and symbolizes the history of Omiya Bonsai Village. 

A 150-year-old Chinese quince at the museum also boasts several famous owners, including former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, the second Japan Bonsai Association president and the Japanese representative at the bicentennial bonsai donation to the United States.

Left: A scene from the monthly kids bonsai workshop.

Right: Bonsai Curator Mr. Nakamura (second from right) and Mr. Saito (far right) repotting a large black pine tree

But Taguchi doesn’t manage this massive collection alone. He and Dr. Shinichiro Hayashi lead curatorial operations for non-bonsai materials and exhibitions. Shinta Nakamura and Masayuki Saito, two bonsai artists who trained at Seiko-en, are full-time curators in charge of bonsai cultivation and management, while a bonsai artist from Omiya Bonsai Village works as an assistant.

Rumiko Ishida handles publicity and education, while Miyuji Tateishi recently joined Omiya as a curator for exhibitions and education. About 30 volunteer staff members work as visitor guides and workshop assistants, but they do not care for the bonsai.

Taguchi said Omiya is the only public museum in Japan that specializes in bonsai as a living work of art. The museum is the only one in the world that displays bonsai in tatami rooms, or traditional Japanese viewing rooms with tatami mats for flooring. 

Omiya also produces specialized academic research on the history and culture of bonsai. The results are presented to the public through numerous historical and cultural materials.

The museum’s permanent indoor exhibition room takes visitors through more than 42 feet of a bonsai history panel display. The final section features a detailed explanation of the history of Omiya Bonsai Village. Trees from the village's garden are regularly displayed at the museum to expand local knowledge about the village and its bonsai.

The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum lobby

Taguchi added that the Sister Museum partnership between Omiya and the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in Washington, D.C. helps to demonstrate the range of bonsai culture and interest to people in Japan. 

“As representatives of each country, it is important for our two museums to introduce the expansion of bonsai culture in the other country through core projects such as history, culture, educational promotion and volunteer activities,” he said. “By deepening our relationship through the ‘language’ of bonsai and joint public relations, we can enhance the value of bonsai, revitalize the bonsai community on both sides and gain support for both museums as institutions of global importance.”

Taguchi said Omiya hopes to partner with other bonsai museums and botanical gardens around the world to promote the value of bonsai.

“By maintaining not only personal connections but also lasting relationships between museums, we will be able to build friendships around the world through bonsai, just as Saburo Kato said,” he affirmed.

Learn more about our Sister Museum on their website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. 

Left: the central part of the bonsai garden | Right: Curator Dr. Taguchi preparing for a lecture

Bonsai Around the World: The Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum Bonsai and Penjing Collection

Satsuki azaleas from Dr. Melvyn Goldstein’s collection at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum Photo credit: Michigan Photography.

Bonsai has always had an educational component, but for this edition of Bonsai Around the World, we literally go to school – to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan.

While the arboretum and gardens sit in separate parts of the campus, they form one unit with a single director. The first trees were a gift from the University’s former pharmacology department head, Dr. Maurice Seevers, who had a deep passion for bonsai. The Matthaei-Nichols collection now boasts more than 75 masterpiece bonsai and penjing, with 25 to 30 trees on display in rotation. 

The garden is one continuous loop connected to a nursery space. Carmen Leskoviansky, the bonsai collection specialist, said the displays vary depending on which trees pair well together and looking exceptional. The collection hosts an azalea show each spring showcasing trees and partners with the Ann Arbor Bonsai Society for their yearly show and sale. 

“They use our auditorium, and we have the garden open,” Leskoviansky said. “We work together to perform demonstrations, answer questions and give tours of the collection and garden.”

Many of the collection’s volunteers currently work or have worked for the University, and students work as summer interns and as part of the work-study program throughout the year. Leskoviansky hopes to connect students with the bonsai collection more in the coming years through research and connections with other University units such as the Center for Japanese Studies

She added that the collection’s tropical section will be expanded as a new bonsai display has been built in the conservatory’s Garden House. The outdoor bonsai garden is currently at capacity after receiving an extensive azalea donation from regional bonsai artist Dr. Melvyn Goldstein. 

“Dr. Goldstein has one of the best private collections of Satsuki azaleas in the country,” Leskoviansky said. “It’s definitely a showstopper.”

Bonsai from the nursery space at Matthei-Nichols. Photo credit: Michigan Photography.

Leskoviansky said trees with the biggest draw also include white cedars and native larches. One larch forest in particular wins a “People’s Choice” award almost every year at the Ann Arbor Bonsai Society’s show and sale.

“Visitors really connect with the display because it reminds them of Michigan forests,” she said. 

While Goldstein’s trees are traditional Japanese specimens – azaleas, elms, maples and the like – the original Matthaei-Nichols collection is mostly native to the Great Lakes region. Leskoviansky said American bonsai artists have a lot more room to experiment with these local species. 

“The rocky mountain junipers and ponderosas are popular, but many deciduous trees have not been really explored,” she said. “The trees in our collection started from our local group exploring what was growing around them, and there’s a lot of potential with native plants to make some really nice bonsai.”

Leskoviansky added the Matthaei-Nichols mission focuses on sustainability, so they feature a huge native plant garden and incorporate native plants in many of the display gardens. Native plants don’t rely on fertilizer and pesticides, require less watering and prevent run-off well compared to non-native species, making them a sustainable asset to the collection. 

“We’ve tried to use native plants in the bonsai garden’s ground plantings as the backdrop for our trees instead of more traditional horticultural varieties or Japanese species,” she said. “It’s fun to connect the native species bonsai with the native species growing in our gardens or on the trails.”

Left: an American larch forest that frequently wins People’s Choice each year. Right: Leskoviansky works on a collected white cedar planting.

Leskoviansky is Michigan through and through – she grew up on three acres of Michigan land, attended Michigan State University for horticulture until 2008 and has been working at Matthaei-Nichols since 2009. She first worked at the arboretum’s nearly 100-year-old peony garden. Then a full-time position opened up for her to take over the rest of the special collections, including bonsai. She now solely oversees the bonsai and penjing collection.

“I got a crash course in bonsai after I attended the American Bonsai Society convention in 2011,” Leskoviansky said. “My career in bonsai was a complete accident, but it’s become something I really love to do.” 

She’s now taking a three-year break to apprentice with Michael Hagedorn, whose seasonal program she attended from 2018-19. Leskoviansky wants to continue building her skills to give the Matthaei-Nichols collection the care it requires. 

Former National Bonsai & Penjing Museum Curator and National Bonsai Foundation Co-President Jack Sustic – a long-time Michigan resident – will tend to the collection a few days a week while Leskoviansky is gone. One of Sustic’s trident maples has resided in the garden for many years. 

While the collection is temporarily closed, check out the Matthaei-Nichols website for more information on the gardens as well as a breadth of general bonsai and horticultural information.

Mel Goldstein’s root-over-rock satsuki azalea with a rabbit foot fern kusamono. Photo credit: Michigan Photography.

Bonsai Around the World: The Pacific Bonsai Museum

PBM’s exhibit, World War Bonsai: Remembrance and Resilience, on view through October 2021 Photos: Aarin Packard

Many of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s staff members have gone on to establish a great bonsai legacy for themselves. For this edition of Bonsai Around the World, we detail the Pacific Bonsai Museum through an interview with Aarin Packard, one of our former assistant curators who now leads PBM as curator.

Packard grew up in Southern California, forging a connection to nature while gardening with his parents on the weekends and watching his father work on bonsai in the backyard. He always held an appreciation for miniatures, like scale models, as well as Asian culture, particularly martial arts. Packard, however, only became interested in bonsai after several of his friends began the practice.

He started after buying a tree from the Orange County swap meet and tended to it as a hobby while studying anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. Packard read about the art and visited local nurseries and club shows. He started pursuing bonsai as a career after moving to D.C. to get his master’s in museum studies at The George Washington University and coming across the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. 

“On my first day as a resident in the District, I went to the U.S. National Arboretum and stopped at the bonsai museum,” he said. “Michael James was the assistant curator at the time, and I asked him, ‘How do I get your job?’”

In February 2006, Packard graduated from GW and was selected as the assistant curator for the Museum, a position he served until 2014. The year before Packard left the Museum, the Weyerhaeuser Company – one of the largest North American timber companies – donated its entire bonsai collection to a new nonprofit, The George Weyerhaeuser Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection, or the “Pacific Bonsai Museum.”

The nonprofit was looking for a curator, which Packard saw as a great opportunity to return home to the West Coast while heading the privately run but public collection. He was hired to use his museum studies background to curate exhibits for the new collection and lead tree care efforts.

“I was given the opportunity to create a vision for what this Museum could be,” he said. “I kind of had a blank slate to do what I wanted, so it was exciting to have that creative freedom to progress in my career, and it’s been really enjoyable.”

Rather than separating their trees into different collections, the museum displays a museum-wide exhibit each year with trees that pertain to the exhibit’s theme. The current exhibition is “World War Bonsai,” an idea Packard has been forming since working with bonsai artists and trees with intrinsic ties to World War II, like the Yamaki Pine. 

“I’ve been amassing research on this era throughout my career, and with last year being the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, I felt like it was an appropriate time to investigate the stories of bonsai and people within our collection that have a relationship with that time,” Packard said. 

Alcove depicting the scene when 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to board trains and travel to live in barbed-wire detention camps displayed with a Bristlecone Pine bonsai originally created by Kelly Hiromo Nishitani

The exhibition primarily focuses on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war and how the years of fighting affected the art of bonsai both in the United States and Japan. 

“It’s been a well-received exhibit,” Packard said. “The exhibit sheds light on the cost of war on the art of bonsai and how it provided people in hard situations comfort and connection to cultural communities and extensions of self.” 

The museum's exhibits incorporate work from contemporary artists that connect the theme of the display to current events. World War Bonsai features an installation from a Seattle-based Japanese American artist who draws parallels from Japanese incarceration to current racial inequities in the United States. 

“That’s one thing bonsai has the ability to do – the art is not just limited to cute little trees and someone’s gardening curiosity,” Packard said. “Bonsai are objects of significance that have a lot of resonance and can tell stories that haven’t been told before.” 

Though the museum’s trees are displayed in an open-air gallery, the bonsai are still protected in the winter with their own small, cube-like greenhouses that are removed in the spring. About 60 trees are displayed at a time among the museum’s alcoves and benches, but Packard moves the bonsai around depending on the year’s exhibit. The museum’s tropical trees remain in a special conservatory throughout the year to keep them safe from the elements. 

Left: Aarin pruning the domoto maple; Right: Domoto maple (in training since 1850) in colorful, leafy state

A 9-foot-tall trident maple from the Domoto family is what Packard calls the museum’s “crown jewel.” The Domoto maple is one of the oldest bonsai in the United States, imported from Japan for the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1913.

Kanetaro Domoto, a Japanese immigrant who ran one of the largest commercial nurseries in California, bought the maple after the fair, and it was the only possession the family didn’t lose during the Great Depression. The tree survived alone during the incarceration period of World War II, but upon their release from captivity Domoto’s son found and cared for it until 1990, when he loaned it to the Weyerhaeuser collection. His descendants eventually donated the tree outright to the museum.

 “The maple tells the story of bonsai in the United States and the Japanese American immigrant experience,” Packard said. “Just to think of the story of this tree and how it survived hardships is kind of the flipside of bonsai during the era and is very rare to see.” 

Learn more about the Pacific Bonsai Museum and its beautiful exhibits here. 

Bonsai Around the World: Jardin Botanique de Montréal

”Garden of weedlessness” – the Penjing greenhouse at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, credit to Matthiew Quinn

For this edition of Bonsai Around the World, we’re highlighting a garden that is just a hop, skip and a jump north of us: in Canada!

The Montreal Botanical Garden, or Jardin Botanique de Montréal, is home to about 350 bonsai and penjing from North America, Japan, Northern and Southern China, and Vietnam or similarly tropical areas. About 120 trees are on display at a time, while others are worked on in a service area or greenhouse, depending on the season. 

The collections began with just Chinese trees. In 1980, the garden participated in a flower show called Floralies, and after the show concluded, Japanese and Chinese vendors donated trees they couldn’t sell to the botanical garden. Dr. Yee-sun Wu, a notable penjing collector, also gifted the gardens his penjing with the stipulation that they construct a dedicated penjing area. 

Left: Juniperus chinensis var. Sargentii, Japanese collection, donated by Kenichi Oguchi (Japan); Right: Serissa japonica, penjing collection, donated by Lui Shu Ying (Hong Kong) – credit to Roger Aziz

A greenhouse was soon converted to house the penjing, followed by a Japanese garden in 1989 to house trees gifted by the Nippon Bonsai Association. The gardens eventually accumulated so many bonsai and penjing that former curator David Easterbrook and other managers decided to start employing two curators to oversee the different collections. 

Curator Eric Auger working on a bonsai – credit to Roger Aziz

One current curator, Eric Auger, first became involved with the Montreal Botanical Garden working under Easterbrook, whom he met at a bonsai workshop. 

“One day he told me, ‘You’ve got good hands and a good eye, maybe you could take over for me when I retire,” Auger said. “I studied horticulture in Canada and bonsai in Japan, and when I came back I got the job.” 

He became curator in 2011 to oversee the Japanese, North American and tropical collections. Some of the more famous trees Auger works on are a forest planting by Saburo Kato, a juniper from Kenichi Oguchi, a few bonsai from Nick Lenz and a tree from Ryan Neil. 

The Montreal Botanical Garden North American Collection – credit to Eric Auger

The North American collection is on display in the The Frédéric Back Tree Pavilion, an educational center that opened in 1996 to educate visitors on the various dimensions of tree care, the importance of ecosystems and the vital role trees play in human life.  

The Vietnamese collection constitutes the garden’s core tropical tree collection. A generous gift of big tropical bonsai in the 1990s and further donations built the collection to what it is today. The trees are shown once a year in the garden’s main entrance hall. 

Auger’s favorite part of the curatorship is technical work, like wiring and shaping trees during the winter, when the bonsai are all in the same greenhouse. In the summer, the bonsai and penjing are spread out across the botanical gardens.

He added that the goal for the North American collection is to only hold native species, regardless of where the artist is from. 

“Right now we’re at about 70 percent of native species, but we’ll soon hit 100 percent,” he said. “All of our collections are donations, so we’re dependent on that, like many bonsai museums.” 

Curator Matthiew Quinn working on a penjing – credit to Roger Aziz

Curator Matthiew Quinn cares for the two Chinese collections. Quinn was first introduced to bonsai in a way many got their first taste: watching Karate Kid. Years later, he read Michael Hagedorn’s book on bonsai, bought a ficus and attended a class in Montreal to rekindle his interest in the art form. 

Quinn eventually showed off his bonsai skills to Easterbrook, who wanted him to prove that he was serious about bonsai and could eventually take over the garden’s Chinese collections. So he went back to school, started part-time work on the Montreal collections and studied bonsai and penjing in China before accepting a curator position. 

One unique aspect of the Chinese collections is that Quinn tries to maintain the authentic Lingnan style of Chinese penjing. 

“People who just try the clip and grow technique on their penjing are missing a whole bunch of pointers to make it really authentic,” he said.

Learn more about the Montreal Botanical Gardens here, and share with us on Instagram or Facebook if you’ve visited their beautiful collections!

Bonsai Around the World: The James J. Smith Bonsai Gallery in Fort Pierce, Florida

The entrance to the James J. Smith Bonsai Gallery at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Florida. The architect-designed theme is “Asia meets Florida Cracker,” Kehoe said. Photo credit: @heathcotebg on Instagram.

The world of bonsai is fortunate to encounter so many legendary artists, many of whom are immortalized in displays, buildings or collections at bonsai museums and gardens. For this installation of Bonsai Around the World, we highlight the bonsai collection of an eminent and accomplished icon in the Floridian bonsai community: James Smith. 

We spoke with Tom Kehoe, a close friend and student of the late bonsai master who is now the curator of the James J. Smith Bonsai Collection at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Fort Pierce, Florida. 

Kehoe was drawn to martial arts classes at an early age, which blossomed into an interest in Asian languages, history and art. After receiving a book about bonsai at 16 years old, Kehoe tried to start training bonsai, but he wasn’t very successful in keeping his trees alive. Fifteen years later, a knowledgeable bonsai stylist gave him some tips for bonsai care and, after a few months of successfully raising a few bonsai, Kehoe sought out a bonsai master named Jim Smith for a more expert point of view. 

Tom Kehoe, the curator at the bonsai gallery. Photos courtesy of Tom Kehoe.

Kehoe and his wife began attending Smith’s free monthly lessons, forging a 20-year friendship. Kehoe eventually began assisting Smith with his nursery, helping to run bonsai seminars and eventually taking over the care of Smith’s private tree collection as Smith’s health began to falter. 

“Jim must have had five or six thousand little trees,” Kehoe said. “He had tables and tables of little trees that could grow up to be bonsai.”

To ensure his private collection of bonsai would remain in loving and skilled hands, Smith decided to donate his 100 trees to Heathcote Botanical Gardens, to whom he had previously gifted a few trees. Heathcote leveled off an area of their grounds, designed a display section and constructed a pavilion for the incoming collection. Meanwhile, Kehoe and Smith spent about two and a half years preparing Smith’s bonsai for transfer to their new home. 

“We’d take trees out of the pots, trim the roots way back, reshape the canopy and put them back into the pots,” Kehoe said. “I’d even take one or two home with me, work on them and bring them back the next week. I developed a personal relationship with those trees.”

When the trees first arrived at the Heathcote gardens, Kehoe’s full-time job precluded him from working with the collection. But years later, after Heathcote staff asked him and his wife to work on the trees in preparation for a fundraiser at the gardens, he accepted the curator position. 

“I now commute down there a few times a week, but we have a whole cadre of volunteers that help us out,” Kehoe said. 

A popular attraction at the gallery, a bougainvillea. Its pot is 4 feet long, and the tree can only be moved by forklift!

Getting to know the collection and its owner

Heathcote Botanical Gardens consists of six separate gardens, including areas like the bonsai gallery, a rainforest garden and even a children’s garden. Once a month, staff will host events during which they’ll work on visitors’ bonsai or advise them on how to train and style your tree.

The James J. Smith Bonsai Gallery features about 110 trees of 35 species, almost all of which are tropical and subtropicals and continuously displayed. Their oldest tree is thought to be about 200 years old, a buttonwood with a massive driftwood trunk collected from the Florida Keys that has been in training since 2004. 

Kehoe said many of the bonsai are several feet tall and require six people or more to move them. He said Smith, a bonsai master and the collection’s namesake, is remembered as the “grandfather” of bonsai in Florida, which is home to myriad bonsai displays, nurseries and societies – including a state organization. 

Heathcote hosts a “Garden of Lights” event each year, bringing in 10,000 people to the bonsai gallery in a matter of weeks.

Kehoe said one of the collection’s most notable and prettiest trees is a twin trunk Jaboticaba John Naka styled in the 1970s. The gallery also houses a saikei, or “living landscape,” that bonsai master Yuji Yoshimura arranged in the 1970s. 

Smith is credited with bringing a number of species onto the bonsai scene, particularly Portulacaria Afra – a steadily growing succulent that plays a vital role in the South African ecosystem and is one of the most effective plants in climate mitigation processes. Smith’s first bonsai was a Portulacaria that has been in a pot since 1957.

Another atypical bonsai is an informal upright Bo tree, or Ficus religiosa, the storied species credited with starting the Buddha on his path to enlightenment. The Bo tree’s large heart-shaped leaves are said to represent the great heart of the Buddha.

“Jim would always find unusual species, like bo trees or baobabs, and see how to work with them to make bonsai,” Kehoe said. 

The late James Smith working on a 5-foot, formal upright Portulacaria Afra – the logo tree for the gallery.

Heathcote staff have to store their Baobab in a dark closet without water for part of the year to simulate its natural drought-ridden growth environment in Africa. The gallery also features a gumbo limbo tree, native to South Florida and the Caribbean. Their distinctive thin and shaggy bark is likened to the appearance of skin peeling away. 

“The local nickname for the gumbo limbo is ‘tourist tree’ because, like the tourists, it’s red and peeling!” Kehoe joked. 

You can find more information about the Heathcote and the James J. Smith Bonsai Gallery here. Have you been? Share your pictures and stories with us: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. 

This magnificent Ficus exotica is 4 feet wide, has been in training since 1972 and was displayed at Epcot’s Flower and Garden Show in 2019.

Bonsai Around the World: The North Carolina Arboretum Bonsai Exhibition Garden

A view of the Bonsai Exhibition Garden in the North Carolina Arboretum. All photos courtesy of A. Joura/NC Arboretum.

For our next Bonsai Around the World blog, we’re back in the United States at the North Carolina Arboretum. We spoke with Curator Arthur Joura who has grown the arboretum’s “Americana-style” bonsai collection largely on his own over the past few decades despite having no prior bonsai experience.

In 1992, Joura was a utility worker at the arboretum – then a single empty building and no gardens – when he was assigned to take care of about 100 bonsai the arboretum had received as a donation from a woman in central North Carolina. Joura said the woman had been terminally ill and therefore was unable to take care of her trees. Many had already died or were not salvageable before the arboretum received her donation. 

“All of the bonsai were badly out of shape, and a lot of them had bugs and disease and so forth, so it was a real shambles to begin with,” he said.

Joura was originally resistant to take care of the trees, a task he didn’t think would be interesting. But he said he was “strongly encouraged” to take the job as a potential career opening. Joura previously bore no knowledge of bonsai or interest in the art, but he said his life changed after he took charge of the initial donation. 

“It was one of those things I could never have guessed at or arranged – it just happened, and I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Joura eventually studied at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum – where he formed a close friendship with former Arboretum Director Dr. John Creech – as part of an experience with the Nippon Bonsai Association and trained in New York State under Yuji Yoshimura. Joura said bonsai perfectly combined two main threads of his life: his educational background in fine arts and his personal interest in plants, horticulture and nature in general. 

“Bonsai is truly a visual art form, a way for me to be personally expressive through creativity, working with plants as a living medium,” he said. “To me, bonsai doesn’t need the props of foreign cultures to make it better. It’s good enough just as something people can do with plants that allows them the freedom of personal creative expression.” 

Arthur Joura, bonsai curator at the North Carolina Arboretum.

One temporary staff person waters the North Carolina Arboretum’s bonsai garden on the weekends and during the growing season, and three volunteers work mostly in the maintenance area, but Joura is the only one who works on bonsai styling. He pulls ideas from the trees he sees while he walks around his town or hikes in the mountains and woods near his home. 

“Sometimes I’m driving down the road, I stop and take my camera and say, ‘What is it that I like about that tree that makes me want to look at it so much?’” Joura said. “I try to break it down in my mind’s eye to understand how it got to be that way, and that’s what informs my work at the arboretum – the study of trees, both visually and biologically, how they function and what shapes them.”

The exhibition garden trees are saplings Joura has grown himself, bonsai that have been collected from nearby wilderness and some that people have donated after working on the trees for 30 years. The majority of the bonsai are less than 50 years old, but Joura said the design of the bonsai should be more important than their age or monetary value. 

“Our trees speak to people’s souls, their sense of poetry and appreciation of the living breathing world all around them,” he said. “That’s what we hang our hats on. I wish more people would see it this way.”

A display of eight bonsai at the Bonsai Exhibition Garden.

About 40 bonsai are on display at a time in the garden. Joura said Asheville, the city in which the arboretum is located, was not a bonsai hotspot, so he didn’t have any bonsai authority figures to develop the garden with. Instead, he led a group of about 10 people in the design and fundraising for the garden over the course of about seven years. Joura said the garden was built entirely on donated funds, which was the ultimate sign of support from their community. 

The garden is designed with the intent of creating a home for the plants on display with access to water and other amenities needed for horticulture but also to produce an environment that would transport guests to another place. 

“At first the plantings were all small and young but 15 years later, it’s really come into its own,” Joura said. “The whole garden is a meditation piece.” 

The exhibition garden includes a range of native trees and typical bonsai species, like Japanese white or black pines and gingko trees, but Joura said the collection represents strictly American bonsai. Joura maintains that the bonsai garden presents an experience incomparable to any other bonsai institutions that might contain bigger or older trees or bonsai trained or designed by famous bonsai artists.

“Our purpose is to represent our own place and time right now in western North Carolina and not anywhere else,” he said. “We have no intention of trying to connect to any other culture but our own. We don’t want to be anything else than what we are, and we’re not trying to pretend to be something we’re not.”

Two tray landscape displays – Left: “Aunt Martha’s Magic Garden” and right: “Mount Mitchell”

Joura said the most popular attractions within the arboretum’s bonsai collection are the tray landscape pieces, which he started to extract maximum effect out of plants that were too young to stand alone. Some displays represent spots in North Carolina places while some are simply generic Southern Appalachian expressions.

“The trees in the landscapes weren’t old enough or didn’t have enough presence or character to be displayed as individual single-tree bonsai and by mashing them together using stones and groundcover and whatnot, we could create a scene and more visual interest,” Joura said. 

He said visitors tend to find the landscapes appealing because they intuitively understand how to interact with the pieces, placing themselves into the scenes. 

“The idea is you shrink yourself down and put yourself into that picture, but for a lot of folks it’s difficult when the only information they get is just a single tree,” Joura said. “But give them a group of trees, some shrubs and stones and such, now they have an environment they don’t have to create so much out of their imagination.”

He said hearing visitors’ comments about their ability to relate to the landscapes and trees daily is gratifying rather than just listening to people wondering about how old a certain bonsai is or how much a display might cost. 

“If someone’s asking those questions, they’re getting blocked out by their preconceived notions about what’s important,” Joura said. “But the people who go in there and say, ‘That reminds me of that place we saw in California,’ that’s great – they’re completing the scene, taking what we’re presenting and adding their own experience and that makes it personal to them.”

Left: Eastern Redcedar, Right: Red Maple

Bonsai Around the World: The National Bonsai & Penjing Collection in Canberra, Australia

The national collection on display in Canberra, Australia. Photos courtesy of Leigh Taafe.

For our next Bonsai Around the World blog, we’re taking you to the land down under. 

The National Bonsai & Penjing Collection of Australia is home to 120 bonsai, an amalgamation of donations and loans that have been trained and grown 100 percent by Australian artists. We spoke with Curator Leigh Taafe about his personal connection with bonsai and the development of the bonsai collection in Australia’s capital, Canberra. 

Taafe said his journey from a bonsai hobbyist to the top position at the collection kicked off after he watched the original Karate Kid film, which uses bonsai as an archetype for the inner peace and symbol of what karate should be. He opened a commercial bonsai nursery in 2000, running classes and workshops and renting out bonsai to local offices and restaurants for about 13 years. 

The main influence on Taafe’s bonsai styling comes from Harry Tomlinson’s Complete Book of Bonsai, which was his sole source of inspiration and information before the internet became a prevalent bonsai resource.

“Once I became a professional I learned to just focus on what I was doing rather than anyone else,” he said. “I am a gatherer of information, but outside of maintenance and techniques, I tried to create my own style.”

Taafe, right, working with Assistant Curator Sam Thompson, left.

In 2010, Taafe officially joined as an assistant curator for three years then rose to the curator position. While the collection technically opened to the public in September 2008, the trees were located on a premise separate from its current location, which was established in 2013 at the National Arboretum in Canberra. 

“We started from the ground up,” Taafe said. “We started collecting trees in 2007 for the purpose of a national collection – it wasn’t a collection to begin with.” 

The arboretum, which was constructed as a monument to the people and homes lost in brush fires that decimated miles of land in the early 2000s, contains approximately 100 forests as well as gardens, playgrounds and a visitor center. The bonsai display area features about 70 trees ready for show but also a small area for trees undergoing various maintenance stages. 

Trees that need to keep warm in the winter, like bougainvillea, are stored in glass with heaters to prevent subzero temperatures at night. Taafe said Canberra temperatures can reach minus 8 degrees Celsius (or about 17 degrees Fahrenheit).

LEFT: A smooth-barked apple (gum tree) native to Australia and nearby islands that dates back to 1959.

RIGHT: The box leaf privet, dating back to 1880.

The displays in the National Bonsai & Penjing Collection are arranged simply in an aesthetic and appealing manner, not limiting trees to areas for specific artists or regions. Every tree has been styled and grown by Australian artists, as Australia imposes strict quarantine requirements for imported goods. 

“From the outset we decided the collection was going to be a representation of the art of bonsai in Australia,” Taafe said. 

A loans program, through which the collection harbors trees from artists around the country for periods of up to two years at a time, keeps the wider Australian bonsai community involved and provides for “a dynamic, ever-changing arrangement of bonsai and penjing,” he said. Occasionally, artists from different countries will stop by for demonstrations and events, but the collection doesn’t contain any trees that artists visiting Australia have styled from raw materials. 

The oldest tree in the collection, which dates back to 1880, spent approximately 100 years growing in a hedge, and the youngest tree is only about 18 years old. The oldest non-living display at the collection is a petrified wood stump that is 165 million years old. 

Assistant Curator Sam Thompson extensively trained in Japan. Taafe said he performs great work on older trees.

Taafe said Australian bonsai artists tend to be influenced by their surrounding landscape, particularly when styling native species. But their techniques are also molded by Japanese and European artists. 

“Some of our early learnings date back to the 70s, when the likes of John Naka came for workshops and such, so we do have that Japanese influence,” Taafe said. “But when I look at my collection, it’s not overly stylized. It’s quite a natural appearance.”

He added that the collection is a partnership between the Australian bonsai community and the ACT government. Approximately 60 volunteers put in about 140 hours of work each week to ensure the collection is up to par for the 175,000 visitors the collection receives each year. 

Taafe said his relationship with bonsai has changed over the years, from a fascination with the art of creating miniature trees to the commercial route, which was a means to provide for his family. He’s the only one in his family that really got involved with bonsai – the interest was not passed down throughout generations.

But when he became curator of the Australian national collection, his focus shifted to making the art readily available to everyone. 

“I just wanted to share bonsai, not only what we have here on display but also the knowledge,” he said. “Hopefully I’m sparking an interest in other people who might get involved in bonsai.” 

LEFT: A penjing styled the Lingnan way starting in 1994, representing a mythical dragon.

RIGHT: Petrified wood stump more than 165 million years old.

Bonsai Around the World: The Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego, California

The Inamori Pavilion at The Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego. Photo credit: Dominic Nepomuceno

Museums might be closed and traveling restrictions are still in effect, but that won’t keep us from sharing the art of bonsai. Welcome to our new blog series, “Bonsai Around the World,” where we highlight different collections around the globe. 

For our first in this new series, we talked with Neil Auwarter, the bonsai curator at the Japanese Friendship Garden since 2018, about the collection he oversees in San Diego.

A lawyer by profession, Auwarter’s love for bonsai began in about 2008 after he helped his daughter take care of a bonsai he gave her as a birthday present. He said he relied on online instructionals from bonsai artists like Graham Potter and Bjorn Bjorholm until he discovered local bonsai outlets and organizations, like the San Diego Bonsai Club.

Auwarter took a volunteer position at the bonsai pavilion in what used to be known as the San Diego Wild Animal Park (aka Safari Park), which houses one of the club’s bonsai collections. He was soon promoted to oversee the club’s collection at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. 

A stream at The Japanese Friendship Garden. Photo credit: Dominic Nepomuceno

First opened in 1991, the Japanese Friendship Garden is a nonprofit that participates in the same Sister City program as the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. Its sister city is Yokohama, Japan. 

Auwarter said the garden originally just put a few bonsai out for show on an indoor tokonoma and maintained a separate growing area for the trees they were grooming for the display. But about 15 years ago the growing area became its own attraction, and staff began crafting a traditional three-scene Japanese garden to show off the bonsai. 

Auwarter said the garden and bonsai collection now receive about 200,000 visitors a year. 

A pomegranate in the collection at The Japanese Friendship Garden. Photo credit: Dominic Nepomuceno

A few standout trees

The Japanese Friendship Garden scenes reflect the features of and species grown in San Diego’s Mediterannean-like climate, including a stream, two koi ponds, a water feature and a new pavilion.

“It’s a very elaborate and beautiful Japanese garden,” Auwarter said. 

The most recent bonsai donation is an old, twisted pomegranate from Bruce and Yaeko Hisayasu, very active members in the bonsai community. One of Auwarter’s favorite trees in the collection is a 200-year-old California juniper donated by Sherwin Amimoto. 

“I love the fact that it’s a California native,” Auwarter said. 

Auwarter working on a California juniper donated by Sherwin Animoto at home.

The garden also boasts a femina juniper forest bonsai composition, similar to the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s famous Goshin. Auwarter said Larry Ragle, who studied under Goshin’s creator, John Naka, worked on the arrangement at a two-day festival at Disneyland, then donated the display to the garden.  

“It’s a beautiful composition,” he said. “It’s massive, very well done and so reminiscent of Goshin. The influence of John Naka makes the display special to me.”

While the Japanese Friendship Garden is not currently open to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic, staff members are evaluating how to safely return to operations. Keep an eye out on their website for announcements, and if you’re ever in Southern California, be sure to stop by!