American Bonsai at the NC Arboretum

I have not seen a recent photo of the development of this tree till now; it keeps getting better.

Vance Wood wrote:I have not seen a recent photo of the development of this tree till now; it keeps getting better.

Yes sir! It looks as natural as they get. Reminds me of a big silver maple. Thay tend to grow in just this shape if left alone.
And from experience trimming,cutting down a few trees in my time I can say that most fine branching is at the ends of branches. A full size tree in nature like this will can have 10 to 20 foot branches with nothing on then for 3/4 of their length.

thanks walter for illustrating and michael for thought provocation.

vance - i dont think the specific subject of ramification was circular...

and there are many ways to get a peak at a woman's unmentionables...
i have found the best way by far is to simply ask in a way that makes her want to say... yes, please.

I thought that MichaelS was saying that branches should fork more frequently along the whole length of each branch, not just ramifying at the ends of the branches.

Correct?

kingsnake wrote:

Correct?

Perfectly illustrated ks.

In the vast majority of deciduous trees getting older branches to bud when the tree is approaching maturity is next to impossible. The only way is grafting and that is not so easy but by doing it this way you are assured of plenty of ramification early on. If you happen to then think there is too much, how easy is it to cut some off?
It's definitely the long way home but the most scenic route.

beer city snake wrote:

Although you can't see the whole tree, if you carefully follow any particular branch you will find that it forks at least 6 times before it reaches the tip even on these sparsely branched examples. But they don't necessarily make goo (goo?) I mean good models for bonsai IMO.

Better this kind of thing:





I admit it will be difficult to get fine ramification on a small A. rubrum but that should be the goal, which makes early branching that more important I think.

[quote="Walter Pall"]

But the way to develop a tree like this is NOT to let the shoots grow until the ideal silhouette is reached and then ramify it at the end. The way is to cut back several times, wire and bend it for many years with a crown which is smaller than the ideal silhouette. Then in the very end you have a lot of good ramification inside and very fine one at the outer shell and you have reached the ideal silhouette. If you are in a hurry you will never again get the interesting branch structure inside. I think that is what Michael wanted to say.

Yes!

beer city snake wrote:thanks walter for illustrating and michael for thought provocation.

vance - i dont think the specific subject of ramification was circular...  

and there are many ways to get a peak at a woman's unmentionables...
i have found the best way by far is to simply ask in a way that makes her want to say... yes, please.

I don't think my remark was about any one thing in particular.   I cannot now re-locate the context where that comment came up. What I meant by circular reasoning was the tendency for an argument to start and end in the same place without going any place, in reference to the discussion in general and not any particular element within that discussion.

10-4 vance

michael - yes the species you show do exhibit the traits you described... and in a naturally occurring form.
my example - not so much.

i can see how that would be desirable with some species, but perhaps not all...
for example, the last tree arthur posted... i dont think it would look as good with SO much ramification brought inwards toward the trunk...

IMO, the inner openness is part of the appeal.

and i dont think walters last tree loses anything in not having so many divisions further in...
to my admittedly novice eye, extensive and extremely consistent inner ramification suggests the hand of man.

not that it isnt visually appealing in some respects... just not as natural (again and needless to say: IMO)

by the way - just outta curiosity, what part of australia are you in (i spent a few months travelling up and down your east coast back in the late 80')

Hey Arthur J are you taking this all in? Or perhaps you are hibernating like a bear in the mountains. Stay warm my friend.

Yes, bcs
in following the discussion, I have been looking for natural "ramification" in my local trees lately.  Not to many deciduous have fine branching near the trunk, Generally.  Junipers do sort-of.
BTW, when looking at full-size trees, also avoid examples influenced by man...

Hello Walter,

I was grateful to receive your last message, reassuring me that our open correspondence might continue. I have not taken the opportunity to write back until now because it has proven difficult for me to organize in my mind how to proceed with what I want to say. Although for you this exercise is probably little more than a careless amusement, I have always had a purpose motivating me and now that I have approached the very edge of addressing that purpose I find myself reluctant to finally do it.

In our previous exchanges we have come to agreement about a number of ideas and observations. We took the time to go over the prevailing bonsai styles of our day - Neoclassical, Modern, Naturalistic - defining them with words and pictures. We know not everyone in bonsai is in agreement about all this. Some people still deny the existence of these classifications, preferring to think in terms of "good bonsai and bad bonsai", while others are willing to accept that they might exist but seem to have difficulty distinguishing one from another, and still others simply do not care. The time is now passed for trying to bring along those who drag their feet, either through indifference or rejection of the premise or the inability to understand regardless how many times it might be explained. The time has come to press forward with our discussion, and those who want to follow it may and those who do not should not bother. Up until now I have been mostly asking you questions but now I have statements to make. Of course I am still interested in what you think, but now I am in an almost psychotherapeutic mode, talking out thoughts that have been gathering in my mind for a long time, and hoping the act of fully exposing them will bring some sense of conclusion.

I think you know my background, through conversations we have had and other correspondence over the years. For the sake of laying a foundation, though, I repeat here some of the important details:

• The bonsai I started with at the NC Arboretum were donated, a private collection that was originally of only modest quality but came to us badly neglected and in a state of critical decline.
  

• I knew and cared nothing about bonsai when I was selected to take on the collection. I tried at first to avoid the assignment.
  

• Asheville is now a center for bonsai in the Southeastern US, but when I started out it was nothing of the sort. There was a small local bonsai club in town, but there was no bonsai nursery and no "name brand" bonsai experts within 100 miles of this place, and such people rarely even passed through.
  

• I was told very early on, by no less an authority than the Executive Director, that there was no place for culturally foreign artifacts at the NC Arboretum. A large part of our institution's mission is to interpret and promote Southern Appalachian flora and culture, and the standard treatment of bonsai as an expression of Japanese culture, however fascinating and venerable, would be out of place. If bonsai was to have a home at the NC Arboretum, it would have to be something other than what most people conceive it to be. (Did I ever tell you about being told this? Maybe not, because I seldom mention it.)
  

• Bonsai is not my hobby. Have you heard that one before? I wish I was the one who first said that, but it is a quote of yours. You started out as a bonsai hobbyist but eventually became a world-recognized professional, and I think it is true for perhaps all other bonsai professionals, regardless of their stature, that they started out being hobbyists. I have never done bonsai as a hobby. I only became interested in it because it was given to me as a job to do at the NC Arboretum. I still do not personally own any bonsai, and have no plans of ever having any in the future.
  

• I have no professional interest in bonsai beyond my job as curator of the NC Arboretum bonsai collection. I often teach and do work on other people's trees, but only in my capacity as an Arboretum employee. I have no private clients, and no "students" in the way that term is typically used in reference to a bonsai professional. In short, I have no goods or services to sell. I find this to be most liberating and would not have it any other way.
  

Looking objectively at how the Arboretum and I started out in bonsai, there would be little reason to think it would go well. We began with a rag-tag assortment of dilapidated plants, put in the care of someone who did not know what he was doing, situated in a place where there were virtually no supporting resources. But as you know because you have been here three times now, we have been incredibly successful. Bonsai has flourished here. Our collection is in excellent condition, the garden in which it is presented is unique, a community of avid supporters has coalesced around our efforts and the general public lets us know on a regular basis that they think bonsai is one of the very best things the NC Arboretum has to offer.

How on earth did this happen?

In my opinion it happened because of, not in spite of, all the aspects of the situation that would appear at first glance to have been detrimental. The poor specimens we started with allowed us the freedom to take calculated risks with them. A prized and valuable old bonsai is not a thing to be trifled with, the objective generally being to maintain it, hopefully refine it, but heaven forbid you do anything to mess it up! My own lack of experience in bonsai, the fact that I was not a hobbyist beforehand, meant I came to the task with few preconceived notions. The fact that the Arboretum was out of the bonsai mainstream, beyond the immediate influence of established authorities, meant we had no one looking over our shoulder and telling us what we were doing wrong. The lack of an already established audience in our region meant we could build our own and make it more inclusive. And what about the mandate from the Executive Director, that our bonsai would have to be something other than the stereotypical image of an "ancient Japanese art"? That was the key ingredient in the whole enterprise.

I must confess I needed little encouragement to disengage with all the Japanese baggage that usually accompanies bonsai. I have absolutely nothing against Japanese people or Japanese culture (despite slanderous statements to the contrary made in public by an international bonsai artist), but I have no special attraction to them, either. I try to get along with everyone and respect all cultures, but Japanese culture is no more specially appealing to me than French or Australian or Mexican culture. I do not relate to it because it is foreign to me, and I have my own culture that I like very much and feel most comfortable with. You can keep the sushi, but please pass me that North Carolina barbecue! The close Japanese-identification of bonsai is likely why it never occurred to me to be a bonsai hobbyist. I had a vague awareness of bonsai before being asked to take on the Arboretum's collection, but I could see nothing of interest in it because it was so obviously foreign in its outlook. When the boss told me that our bonsai would have to be something different I shrugged. That sounded fine with me. The question was, if bonsai is not to be about Japanese culture, what is it to be about? Put another way the question comes out like this: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

Well, if this is indeed some sort of psychotherapy session, right now would be when the doctor glances at the clock and says, "Sorry, but it looks like we're out of time for today! I think we've made some real progress, though, and I think it's important that we get back to this again as soon as possible... "

I have other things to do today and it is probably time for your nap. I will write again in the next day or so.

Arthur Joura wrote:...I have absolutely nothing against Japanese people or Japanese culture (despite slanderous statements to the contrary made in public by an international bonsai artist), but I have no special attraction to them, either. I try to get along with everyone and respect all cultures, but Japanese culture is no more specially appealing to me than French or Australian or Mexican culture. I do not relate to it because it is foreign to me, and I have my own culture that I like very much and feel most comfortable with. You can keep the sushi, but please pass me that North Carolina barbecue! The close Japanese-identification of bonsai is likely why it never occurred to me to be a bonsai hobbyist. I had a vague awareness of bonsai before being asked to take on the Arboretum's collection, but I could see nothing of interest in it because it was so obviously foreign in its outlook. When the boss told me that our bonsai would have to be something different I shrugged. That sounded fine with me. The question was, if bonsai is not to be about Japanese culture, what is it to be about? Put another way the question comes out like this: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

I know you're "talking" to Walter, but I wanted to say two things:

(1) your paragraph partly reproduced above is a pretty accurate description of my feelings toward bonsai and Japanese culture (but I'll happily take some sushi, along with the bbq). Actually, I'm not really sure why I've become so captivated by bonsai as a hobby...maybe the challenge of working with living material that is constantly "fighting back" (as opposed to a canvas and paint, which basically sits there and takes whatever you throw at it). Plus I'm just a plant nerd.

(2) the history of your involvement in, and the development of, the bonsai collection at the arboretum is very interesting. I had no idea but a lot of things make sense now. Overall, it seems to have worked out pretty well!

Looking forward to the next installment.

Chris

Arthur Joura wrote:... ...I have never done bonsai as a hobby. I only became interested in it because it was given to me as a job to do at the NC Arboretum. I still do not personally own any bonsai, and have no plans of ever having any in the future.
... ...I have no professional interest in bonsai beyond my job as curator of the NC Arboretum bonsai collection. I often teach and do work on other people's trees, but only in my capacity as an Arboretum employee. I have no private clients, and no "students" in the way that term is typically used in reference to a bonsai professional. In short, I have no goods or services to sell. I find this to be most liberating and would not have it any other way.
... ...When the boss told me that our bonsai would have to be something different I shrugged. That sounded fine with me. The question was, if bonsai is not to be about Japanese culture, what is it to be about? Put another way the question comes out like this: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

Very interesting, indeed!
I would have never thought this to be true!
I cannot wait for the follow up

Arthur Joura wrote:...Put another way the question comes out like this: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

Container gardening.

You do realize Arthur, that this is a public forum right?

AJ - while i was aware of how your back-story on how you came into this endeavor, i was previously unaware of the "executive directive" and am glad that you included it in your brief "bio"... all of those factors should provide some context for those who might be scratching their heads (or otherwise) at how you approach bonsai...

had the director wanted to recreate a japanese garden, i feel you would have shrugged and said "ok" because like you said, bonsai was barely on your radar at that time anyway, and one way or another of displaying the trees may have made little difference to you at the time (apart from your general disinterest in japanese culture, which many westerners have shown to be easy enough to co-opt when it suits them)

so i am glad things went the way they did, if for no other reason than providing yet another facet of how to work with trees in pots.

Bonsai Gardening was a Chinese and then Japanese endevour and became  part of their Cultures as time went on and continues today as such... along with the joining by many others of various Countries but not involving their Culture's...

Anyone today practicing Containerized Gardening of Trees, sculpting, pruning, wiring, trimming and ultimately Styling is essentially following in the Art that was developed & practiced by the Chinese, Japanese for Centuries...

One can say whatever they wish re their personal reasons for their Bonsai Gardening but it remains Bonsai Gardening.

IMO

after posting the above, i came across this, which seems to suggest that the executive director may have given you a nudge in the direction to which the arboretums collection was subsequently handled :

the following was found on: https://www.ourstate.com/
article by sarah perry

Arthur Joura hasn’t always been the bonsai man. Joura is tall and broad-shouldered, with salt-and-pepper hair that seems to stay in place even when the wind blows. He has intense blue eyes and speaks with a slight Northern accent but doesn’t like to talk about where it came from; he says he’s from “someplace else . . . a much bigger place.”

Joura started at the arboretum in 1990 as a nursery assistant. He operated a chain saw and a backhoe and a chipper. He cut his way through the mountains and helped make miles of trails.

Two years later, the family of a dying woman called the arboretum and asked if the staff would take her collection of bonsai trees. She was unable to care for them for months, so they sat in pots outside in her yard. They kept growing and growing and growing. No one came to prune them or shape them with wires. By the time the trees made their way to the arboretum, they were a pitiful sight.

The branches were scraggly and twisted and turned like a curvy, mountain road. Grass shot through the soil of the pots. A few of the limbs were gray and dying.

Some of the trees didn’t make it.

“This is what happens when you put a tree in a pot,” Joura thought. “These trees are miserable.”

The board put Joura in charge. It was his job to prune them back to life and give them shape again.

At first, Joura worked on the trees in his spare time. He learned to understand that bonsai is all about manipulation; once you cut back those branches and miniaturize a tree, it’s forever dependent on people. He selected new trees to bonsai based on their adaptability to containers and how they responded to pruning. For hours, he stood in the greenhouse, wrapping soft wires around the branches and hoping they’d take shape and stay where he wanted. He pruned the roots at the right point in the root cycle, not too aggressively, not too softly. He selected containers to complement the tree’s character — different colors, different shapes, for different trees.

Over time, he petitioned the executive director for more time to work on his collection. One day, the director told Joura he would have to help him explain why a traditional Japanese gardening technique had any place in an arboretum that was devoted to interpreting the southern Appalachian culture and experience.

Joura went home that night and wrote a three-page paper. He made two points to support his argument: He could use native trees, such as Carolina hemlock and American hornbeam, in the collection, and he could build tray landscapes that represented North Carolina landmarks. He could make an interpretation of Mount Mitchell and use a small, dead tree to showcase the lifeless trees on the summit; dwarf spruce to represent the Fraser firs; and creeping thyme to represent wild blackberries.

The director promoted Joura to full-time curator for the bonsai collection in 1998.

Now, Joura takes care of the plants. And in their own way, the plants take care of him.

“When you look at a bonsai, you’re looking at the result of a symbiotic relationship between a human being and a plant,” Joura says. “The only reason that plant looks that way is because of its interaction with that human. But the plant gives back. The human being gives the plant shape, definition, character. The plant in turn gives the human being experience, fulfillment, and in the end, character. You feed off of each other.”

If you take out of bonsai all the "obviously Japanese stuff" what you have left is trees of course!

The real question is whether YOU feel that the Japanese stuff really matters?

Arthur obviously doesn't but I'm sure there will be those who disagree. I guess it all depends on what motivates you and what exactly it is that you are trying to convey. If your subject is as specific as the flora of North Carolina then there will not be much call for an oriental aesthetic or for strict adherence to the rules of classical Japanese bonsai styles/forms.

On the other hand if your motivation for practising bonsai in the first place was a love of or fascination for Japanese/oriental art, culture, aesthetics or spirituality then you may see things differently.

These are not the only two starting points of course (there are many) and one is not better or worse, right or wrong they are just different.

However, what Arthur and Walter have done through this thread and via numerous other avenues (in Walters case for many years) is to prove that bonsai can be much more than a quintessentially Japanese art form and that it can be a medium through which many different artist ideas can be expressed.

I for one am extremely grateful for this contribution to my understanding of the subject and for your willingness to share your thoughts on such a public forum where criticism (constructive or otherwise) cannot be avoided. You have certainly changed the way I look at bonsai and perhaps even the way I look at art more generally and all for the better.

Thanks

Richard

beer city snake wrote:... ...“When you look at a bonsai, you’re looking at the result of a symbiotic relationship between a human being and a plant,” Joura says. “The only reason that plant looks that way is because of its interaction with that human. But the plant gives back. The human being gives the plant shape, definition, character. The plant in turn gives the human being experience, fulfillment, and in the end, character. You feed off of each other.”

This character I have found in Arthur's manners, indeed!
Thank you Kevin for searching and finding! https://www.ourstate.com/north-carolina-arboretum/

Richard S wrote:... ...I for one am extremely grateful for this contribution to my understanding of the subject and for your willingness to share your thoughts on such a public forum where criticism (constructive or otherwise) cannot be avoided. You have certainly changed the way I look at bonsai and perhaps even the way I look at art more generally and all for the better... ...

Thank you Richard for expressing my thoughts!

Hello Walter,

I ended my last letter with a question: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

I realize this question is confusing to a great many bonsai lovers, and offensive to most of the rest. It seems that for virtually all the people I know who practice bonsai, or enjoy viewing it, or are even just aware of it without necessarily thinking much about it one way or the other, the assumption of a direct link between bonsai and Japanese culture is so complete that it is not even recognized how entirely the assumption has insinuated itself into their understanding of the core concept. For many there is no bonsai without the Japanese identity. Take away the Japanese stuff and that which is left cannot rightly be called bonsai, that is how integral the one is to the other.

Yet through thoughtful consideration I have found this cultural linkage to be unnecessary. Stripped down to its essential elements - a miniaturized plant, shaped by a human being and cultivated out of the ground - that practice we commonly call by the name "bonsai" has no intrinsic cultural identification by definition. All that is physically necessary in the equation is a plant that can thrive under the required horticultural manipulation and a person who has the ability to manipulate the plant in that manner. Certain plant species will respond well to bonsai growing techniques and certain ones will not, and it does not have much to do with where in the world that particular species of plant naturally occurs. Likewise there are certain people who will be successful in learning the required growing techniques and others who will not, and the particular culture in which they are born will not determine that. When we come upon the right combination of a plant that can thrive under the required manipulation and a human who can master the manipulative techniques, then production of that thing we have come to call bonsai can occur. That is, it is possible for it to occur, but it will not occur without a third, non-physical factor being present: the human being must have some purpose for taking the plant out of its natural place in the earth, miniaturizing it and giving it a particular shape.

Let us consider what this purpose might be. I am sometimes asked by curious visitors to the Arboretum how the practice of bonsai first began. The true answer to this cannot be definitively known because the practice originated before the historical record of it began. We can only surmise how bonsai started, but a likely guess is that a person who frequented a place where naturally dwarfed plants occurred attempted and eventually succeeded in collecting one, taking it home and thereafter cultivating it in a container of some sort. Why did that person do such a thing, and why did the idea catch on with other people? Again, we cannot know for certain because all this took place before anyone bothered to make a record of it. A reasonable surmise would be that the appearance of this naturally dwarfed plant was so compelling to the human mind that it triggered a very familiar human response - the desire for possession. The kinds of environments that naturally produce dwarfed plants tend to be isolated, remote, harsh and not usually convenient for human habitation. So, if a long-ago person came across such a place and found the plants growing in it fascinating and worth contemplating, unless they were satisfied to go through the trouble of returning to that particular place each time they wanted to see those plants, they would be motivated to find some way of taking the plants back to where they lived and keeping them alive there. In this scenario, the impetus for going through all the trouble was the compelling character of the plant that grew in and was shaped by extraordinary circumstances. In short, the purpose driving the activity was an inner need to capture and possess a compelling experience of nature. By extension, if a person was able to do that they could then share their experience with others.

Nothing of what I have above described, neither the physical requirements of growing a miniaturized plant in a container nor the original motivational purpose for a person to do it, are traits exclusive to the culture of Japan. Yes, what I have described as the likely original motivation for bonsai is my conjecture, but it is reasoned and plausible. The same cannot be said of any idea that the original motivation for bonsai was a desire to express appreciation of Japanese culture. For one thing, the history of bonsai is complete enough to tell us without doubt that the practice of producing miniaturized, artistically shaped plants in pots did not originate in Japan. Calling the practice "bonsai" did indeed originate in Japan, as a result of cultural assimilation, but it was a new name for something that previously existed outside of the culture that adopted it. The Japanese did not have to rename it, but chose to do so (perhaps driven in part by the ongoing need to generally differentiate themselves from China, the ever present original source of so much of their culture.) Because it was the Japanese who disseminated bonsai to so much of the rest of the world, their term for the practice is generally used, but there is no requirement whatsoever that those in the rest of the world who learned bonsai from the Japanese must follow their lead in all particulars. The Japanese bonsai professionals would prefer you did that, however. They have expended a great deal of effort in branding bonsai as a Japanese product, just as manufacturers of other kinds of commodities strive to achieve brand name recognition for their products. Even if you do not care to follow the artistic example of the Japanese bonsai professionals, one cannot help but admire the results of their marketing efforts!

Well Walter, I have done it again. I feel like the man who sets out to make a few corrections in a room and ends up building a new house. This installment is long enough but I have not yet reached the point toward which I aim. I will continue another day, but in the meantime I am most curious to know what thoughts all this prompts in your mind. It is entirely likely that nothing I have said here is in any way new to you, but perhaps there are further insights or advice you might like to send my way? If so, please do it.

Arthur Joura wrote:Hello,

I ended my last letter with a question: If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

Pleasure, passion, joy.

Not justifications.

Arthur Joura wrote:

If you take out of bonsai all the obviously Japanese stuff, what do you have left?

You have a platform for unlimited design potential limited only by the human imagination.