As I continue along on my bonsai journey, I find myself enjoying many more trees than I used to. That might lead you to believe that my criteria for bonsai have somewhat softened, but I think you’d find that quite the opposite is true. My standards for my own bonsai are always increasing to follow my bonsai knowledge. But the knowledge that I gain changes my perception of what a quality bonsai really is. One characteristic that has really been driven home in the past couple of years is the value of age, and why the Japanese put such esteem on it. Certainly as things become older, they become more rare, and thus more valuable. Or maybe they just become junk. We don’t tend to revere age in our society the way that many others do. We are about youth. We tend to ignore the wisdom of our elders and go for the quick fix. But when it comes to bonsai, things should be different.

I have always liked larger trees, as many of you well know. But growing them big takes time. Sometimes centuries. I am growing a bunch of deciduous and flowering trees in the ground in my back yard. The temptation is to let them grow really fast and really thick. In reality, if I do that, I get these straight segments of trunk that are joined with harsh angles and no transitions. The trees look very artificial, very obvious, and decidedly uninteresting. You’ve seen a hundred like them before. The roots also grow thick and useless. So I must balance the rapid growth in the ground with regular and strategic pruning to get satisfying results. And it IS happening.

If you have heard our excellent recent speakers, John Thompson and Ted Matson, they both commented on the same idea. We have to use some wire, a little technique, and a lot of patience. I am always delighted at this time of year to check out the progress of the trees after all of the leaves have dropped. It’s like unwrapping my Christmas presents a bit early. Each year, I am slowly managing to dig a few up and get them into pots. The trouble is that I really want them two or three times the size – which means another five or ten years in the ground, then another five years to develop a decent branch structure before I could even think about it as a showable tree. More time. But there is another way!

You can shorten the timeline by letting someone else do the work. You can buy a tree that has already been developed, whether it’s a raw trunk, or fully developed, you’ll be years ahead. What you are really buying is not a tree, but time. Time is our most valuable asset – we give it to employers and customers in exchange for money. So hopefully, when you turn that cash back into trees, you are buying quality time. Years that someone spent carefully and knowledgeably developing the tree.

Sometimes I buy a tree just because it is old. I will have to start over with the styling and might have to develop new branches, but what I am buying is a thirty year head start on the bark of the trunk. With age also comes character. Branches die, insects invade, the dog chews on it, birds pick at its roots. All manner of events contribute to the persona of our trees and it is the tree’s visual record of these events that makes them interesting. Our job is to bring out the unique parts of each tree and maximize it’s potential, whether it’s a new seedling or an ancient monarch.

Scott

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By far the number one challenge we have when setting up one of our shows at the Japanese Gardens is one of flow. Does the movement of an individual tree flow to the left or the right? What does this mean and why is it important? Flow is a term to describe the overall direction that the tree moves toward. In other words, which direction does it lead your eye to? In a normal display, the flow leads you naturally to the accent plant, and that planting points your eyes back up to the tree. In a shohin display with multiple trees, the flow leads you from one tree to another on the stand.

There are several elements that contribute to flow; trunk movement and direction, main branch position, direction of crown, and overall foliage mass. Where we run into trouble is when we have conflicting elements within the design of the tree. Frequently, the main branch goes in one direction, and the top goes in another. This is the most fundamental rule – The apex must move in the same direction as the main branch. The trunk may or may not move the same way, but these two elements – the main branch and top - must agree. The movement can be very subtle, but you can still spot it in balanced tree styles like formal upright and broom.

Obviously, the main factor contributing to movement is the trunk. A slanting trunk is pretty obvious, but most of our trees fall into the informal upright category, where they start one direction and switch to another. The other factor is foliage mass. Where this is located and how strong it is can sway an otherwise balanced tree.

I encourage you to take a look at each tree in your collection and give it a good evaluation to see which direction it’s moving in, and more importantly, that all the factors agree and are in balance. Doing so will improve each tree and make it feel much more harmonious. We don’t have enough space here to talk about how to make corrections; we will have to leave that for another time. Have fun with your trees.

Scott

Cork Bark Japanese Black Pine (Bonsai Boon)

Shimpaku Juniper ‘Itoigawa’ (Bonsai Boon)