Tag Archives: bonsai

Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai 25th Anniversary Show

hawthorn_bonsai 2Last year I was introduced to the world of bonsai. Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai president Ron Anderson, gave me a private tour of his personal bonsai collection at his home in Boulder Creek. Shortly afterwards I attended the club's yearly show held then in Scotts Valley. I arrived a bit late and the afternoon demonstration had already started. The sensei, meaning teacher, was in the process of turning a large 5 gallon overgrown juniper into a finished bonsai. The wiring had been done initiating the training of the branches to form a more pleasing shape and the root pruning was about to begin. All of us in the audience were mesmerized by the seemingly brutal treatment of the plant but the results spoke for themselves. A beautiful, graceful juniper specimen displayed in a large, brown tray did all the talking.

Then the raffle began. Small finished bonsai specimens, starter plants and bonsai trays donated by club members to raise money all went to happy recipients as their ticket numbers were called. The final drawing was for the beautiful, graceful juniper just created by the sensei master. I could not believe my eyes when the winning number was announced. I was the winner. My specimen still lives happily displayed atop a large flat rock in my garden.

The show spans both a Saturday and a Sunday. On the Sunday afternoon last year, the sensei created another large bonsai of  junipers tucked into pockets on a piece of lava rock. As luck would have it, a member of the Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai club, Marc Shaw, won the prize. Recently I had the opportunity to see how it's doing along with the rest of his collection at his home. What a treat.

Marc has been interested in bonsai for 30 years. While working his way through college he found a job at a nursery in Southern California. His father had been a nurseryman so the love of plants runs in his family. He took a bonsai class with the owner of the nursery from John Naka, widely thought to be one of the first people in California to bring the ancient art form of bonsai to the U.S. Since then Marc has increased his collection and knowledge but admits he has learned the most since joining the Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai club 10 years ago.

One of the reasons we all admire bonsai is how they old they look. Some actually are hundreds of years old and handed down in families. Others just look very old and some techniques help further this illusion. Marc shared his method for increasing the size of the trunk of a plants. A thick, twisted trunk is usually only found on an old tree. Marc  has a small plot of land in his garden devoted to growing his future specimens. Underlaid with flooring material buried 6" deep he grows a plant for about 2 years in the ground. This way the roots can grow wide but not deep and helps the future tree trunk to increase in girth.  He has even knocked out a bonsai plant already growing in a shallow pot and transplanted it into the ground for a couple of years to change the look of the trunk.

Marc is especially drawn to developing bonsai that is called "root over rock" or Sekijoju. This simple but time consuming technique mimics the way the upper roots of a tree grip a rock tightly and then are exposed by erosion over a period of years. He has many specimens in training starting them out by teasing the roots and spreading them over a beautiful rock. Collecting interesting rocks is part of the fun and Marc has a spot the family visits in Lake Nacimiento where he finds jaspar.

His oldest bonsai, a mugho pine, is 30 years old. Maybe someday it will rival he oldest bonsai specimens that are estimated to be about 800 years old as I found out on this website –  http://www.bonsaitreegardener.net/5-oldest-bonsai-trees. In the meantime, he will continue to graft and air layer and train his specimens to perfection.

The 25th Anniversary Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai show is March 23rd the 24th at the Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz. Don't miss it.

The World of Bonsai

I walked through an Asian inspired bamboo gate and entered another world- the world of bonsai.  Some trees were blooming, others just leafing out and some had trunks thick and gnarled like they've been alive 200 years- and they have. Here at the garden of the Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai  president, Ron Anderson, I was treated to a tour of 100 specimens in his personal bonsai collection.

The word bonsai comes from two Japanese words that provide the most basic definition of this living art form. "Bon" is a tray or pot , while "sai' means to plant.

At each turn, I marveled at yet another tree in training. Some already in classic bonsai pots while others were still in cut down nursery pots awaiting their day to be root pruned and given a shallow tray.  As living things, they are always growing, leaves and stems being pinched, the branches wired into natural looking shapes, the trunks thickening and sometimes developing nebari or that most sought after look when the surface roots of the tree or root flare are visible above the growing medium

 

Ron told me he has always been interested in Asian and Japanese gardening. It was only 5 years ago, however,  that his father-in-law took him to a bonsai show. He was hooked. His first bonsai? A boxwood that someone was going to throw out. He gets a lot of his plant material that way. Craig's List has been a great source of old, gnarled  plants. A giant rosemary shrub awaits dividing in a wooden box. A huge Tam juniper was on it's way to the dump. He also has many old, overgrown boxwoods in various stages of training that have much potential.Although many people new to the art of bonsai start with a little finished juniper or buy starter plants, collecting wild trees ( yamadori ) is one of the best ways of acquiring new material for bonsai. Ron found a Sierra juniper in a crevice in the Lake Tahoe area that is probably about 200 years old from the looks of the trunk. Care was taken to get most of the root system, otherwise the tree would have been doomed. A tree collected from the wild must be treated to the highest standard of care. But the reward or a unique yamadori bonsai is a worthwhile prize for spending days, months or years searching for potential material.

Ron also finds potential bonsai specimens in nurseries, looking mainly for 5 gallon or larger plants with an interesting trunk. That way the tree looks more like one found in nature. The oaks on Hwy 152, are good models for bonsai design, he says. Bonsai enthusiasts strive to evoke the ravages of nature in their trees. Except for young bonsai-in-training, most specimens seem much older than their small size suggests. And they may also appear to be veterans of years of struggle against natural forces. Actual age is of less importance in bonsai than the illusion of age. To that end, Ron will shave, cut and sometimes burn a trunk or branch to create the look of a lightning strike.

In Ron's collection are flowering quince, pear, elm, boxwood, juniper, azalea ( picky, he says ), cotoneaster, crabapple, olive, persimmon, dawn redwood, coast redwood, strawberry guava, Korean hornbeam, peach and "the cadillac" of bonsai- the black pine. Ron has two of these now.

Most bonsai live outdoors like they do in nature. There are very few that thrive inside. For his wife, Ron is training an olive tree that will eventually live indoors. Starting with a 7 ft tree, it's now 6 " tall. He is forcing new limbs to grow out from the trunk and it now has three branches.

What conditions do bonsai like? Ron keeps all of his collection outside year round. Some are under trees while others are out in the open even on frosty nights. During the summer they get morning sun and afternoon shade. He waters all of them every other day during the growing season but cautions that he knows his plants and their requirements and someone else may have to fine tune their own individual watering schedule. There is no soil in his soil mix, preferring a mix of small pumice, red lava and a few other things he's learned about but "can't give his secrets away". The most important thing is for the mix to have perfect drainage or the tree roots will rot.

Ron transplants his deciduous trees every year as they grow so fast. Evergreen trees are repotted every 3 years. A rootbound tree, with circling roots in the pot, won't be healthy and growing new root hairs. This will inhibit the growth of the trunk and it won't be able to increase in girth.

Deciduous bonsai, Ron explained, are grown in unglazed trays usually in soft, dark colors. Colored glazed containers are reserved mainly for shows although flowering and fruiting plants are sometimes grown in them also.

Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai meets every 3rd Saturday at 9am at the Live Oak Grange hall on 17th Ave in Santa Cruz. Workshops are held on the 2nd Wed of each month at 7pm at the Aptos Grange hall. Ron said that the club has increased its membership by 30 due to its presence on Facebook which is good as without new members, the knowledge won't be passed on.
Visit their website at http://www.gsbf-bonsai.org/santacruzbonsaikai/

And don't miss the upcoming Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai show Saturday, March 24th and Sunday, March 25th to be inspired and have all your questions answered about growing bonsai from the experts. Both days will feature a demonstration at 2 pm by the famous bonsai sensei, Katsumi Kinoshita.  In the demonstration, Kinoshita will show where and how much to trim an ordinary piece of plant material, how to wire the branches to set their growth in the desired shape and how to pot the tiny tree. The completed bonsai will be the prize in the raffle afterwards.

At the show every plant sold comes with an invitation to Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai meetings, where new enthusiasts are welcomed and nurtured.