Autumn colors at the NC Arboretum Bonsai Garden, 2011

The following pictures were all made in the Bonsai Exhibition Garden at the NC Arboretum, over the course of the last 2 weeks. Thanks in part to another summer of drought and excessive heat, the autumn colors have been very good this year!

What a beautiful collection of Bonsai!

Beautiful Arthur,

Thank you for posting !

Ed Trout

Thank you parabellum and Ed Trout for your comments.

Here is another autumn image from last week, and one I particularly like:



This is a planting of Baldcypress originally composed by Qingquan Zhao in 1998. The trees were grown here at the Arboretum from seed collected in 1994, and Mr. Zhao said at the time he was unfamiliar with Baldcypress so this was his first exposure to that material. His work always has such a wonderful, naturalistic feeling! I don't know of any bonsai artist who produces tray landscapes of better quality than those done by Mr. 'Brook' Zhao.

The main reason I enjoy this image is that it captures the NC Arboretum Bonsai Garden doing exactly what it is supposed to do: Providing an encounter with bonsai within a living environment specifically designed to enhance that experience.

AJ wrote:
The main reason I enjoy this image is that it captures the NC Arboretum Bonsai Garden doing exactly what it is supposed to do: Providing an encounter with bonsai within a living environment specifically designed to enhance that experience.

Definitely succeeding. Thanks for sharing the wonderful images.

Amazing colors of autumn. I very much like a group of trees on a stone plate beside spruce. What trees are used?

Thanks for sharing.
Gretings Pavel

AJ, thanks for sharing.

Cheers, CJ.

Amazing colours AJ, Thanks for sharing.

I've been offered the opportunity to take my family to NC for a holiday by a friend who lives in New Bern. I think a cross state visit to Ashville will be on my agenda. I look forward to seeing these trees in person one day.

Rob and CJ - thanks for your comments

Pavel Slovák wrote:
Amazing colors of autumn. I very much like a group of trees on a stone plate beside spruce. What trees are used?

Thanks for sharing.
Gretings Pavel

Hi Pavel - thanks for your interest. I think this is the group you are asking about:



There are 5 species of plants used in this tray landscape - Red Maple (Acer rubrum), Japanese Hornbeam (Carpinus japonica), Dry-land Blueberry (Vaccinium palida), Japanese spirea (Spiraea japonica) and Withe-rod (Viburnum cassinodies). The slab on which they are planted is not natural stone, but was fabricated out of Portland cement by my friend Ken Duncan.

Just as a matter of interest, the bonsai displayed next to this one is not a spruce, although it looks like one in the photograph. Instead, it is a Blue Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca')

Ian Young wrote:Amazing colours AJ, Thanks for sharing.

I've been offered the opportunity to take my family to NC for a holiday by a friend who lives in New Bern. I think a cross state visit to Ashville will be on my agenda. I look forward to seeing these trees in person one day.

Hi Ian - thanks for your response. I hope if you are in North Carolina you will be able to visit the NC Arboretum, although it will take at least 6 hours of Interstate driving to travel from New Bern to Asheville. If you are going to go through all that trouble I hope you will be able to arrange your visit to be sometime during the growing season. The Bonsai Garden is open year-round, but only a few plants are on display in winter. The feeling in the garden is much different then, too:

Oh you can bet I'll be there when it's warm the wife will insist on it!! and If I am going to make it over, expect a PM from me before hand

Amazingly, there is still some autumn color left in this part of the world! It's nearing its end, to be sure, but seeing as how today is November 9th and we had the beginnings of the autumnal color display back on the Expo weekend of October 8th and 9th, we've had an exceptional run this year.

Here are some more images from the NC Arboretum Bonsai Garden, made just a couple of days ago: