Pacific Bonsai Museum "Natives" Preparation: Pitch Pine

Source material: 2017, April 01

          Over the past few months, Dan and I have been preparing five of his trees for an exhibit at the Pacific Bonsai Museum centered around bonsai of species which are endemic to North America (hence the exhibit name, "Natives"). I am excited to attend the exhibit's opening celebration this upcoming Saturday, April 8th, because it includes an artist panel with some big names who were invited to enter trees - Scott Elser, Michael Hagedorn, Randy Knight, Ryan Neil, and Dan Robinson. I once saw Michael Hagedorn during an unplanned visit to my local bonsai store and I may or may not have been mentally fangirling too much to say hello. Or maybe I just didn't want to interrupt his workshop. I will lie to myself and say it was the latter.
          The most recent tree Dan and I prepared was a special pitch pine (Pinus rigida) which needed moss on the soil surface and some needle thinning to bring it into order. The tentatively finished product can be seen below, though slight modifications may still happen before going to the museum. Compared to some of the other trees Dan is loaning for the "Natives" show, this tree only needed slight maintenance; the needle thinning was done in only a day. In upcoming posts about other "Natives" show trees, you will see some of the other tree preparations were more involved projects. I felt a little bit of extra responsibility on this particular day as Dan recently has had some health challenges and was not able to make it to the garden last weekend. Fortunately, one of his more senior students came and was able to give me guidance.

The Acer palmatum baobab bonsai

Source material: 2017, March 18

          Today at Elandan Gardens, Dan pointed out this unique maple tree he has been styling to mimic the African baobab. Dan wanted me to share this particular tree to get people's thoughts on the unconventional maple design.

One Sweet Bougainvillea

Source material: 2016, August 06

          Dan Robinson has collected and developed many rare, unusual, and gnarly trees over his 50+ year bonsai career, hundreds of which can be seen at Elandan Gardens. As will be explained in the near future by a new post, Dan's artistic style values the existence of some "focal point" on his trees. In most cases, that takes the form of a great trunk or some stunning deadwood feature. However, certain components of that focal point style can incite controversy among bonsai hobbyists. Some people are critical of excessive deadwood use - particularly on softwood species. Others appreciate Dan’s use of deadwood as an imitation of natural features on old and ancient trees. A unique bougainvillea featured in today's blog serves as a demonstration of his controversial - but naturally inspired - deadwood use on softwoods as well as an example of a unique focal point trunk.

Before pruning.

Testing - Birth of a Bonsai Blog

          The blog in its current form is an initial test - a work in progress. Over the course of the next few months, I will be retroactively making entries regarding my time spent learning from Dan Robinson, an American bonsai artist who has been practicing bonsai for 50+ years. If you want to follow my lessons from Dan Robinson and my other sources of growth as a bonsai artist, stay tuned. Thank you for reading!

Hi! I encourage you to leave feedback on trees or the blog whenever possible.

A Lesson in Dendrochronology

Source material: 2016, August 19

          Dan has many old trees around his garden with signs detailing their estimated age along with a brief history of the tree and how he acquired it. The trees on display in his garden on the younger end of the age spectrum are mostly those he personally has grown from seed over the past 40-50 years. The vast majority of the rest of his trees are centuries old that he has collected from some rocky mountaintop or growth-inhibiting bog. Frankly, Dan has so many multi-centarian trees that the layman, who is not informed as to the extent of such available specimen in the US, often is suspicious that Dan overstates the age of his trees. The scrutiny of the masses is enough to make Dan be more conservative with his labeled ages. Despite that conservatism Dan's oldest tree is said to originate from 300 BC. As astounding as that is, he often tells me he suspects the tree to be a thousand years older, but does not label it as such because those without his knowledge and experience in forestry would think him guilty of gross exaggeration. There is a clear discrepancy between what the public is familiar with and what Dan is familiar with; this discrepancy is a major motivating factor behind Dan's collection and displaying of old deadwood snags in his garden because most people will never see these ancient artifacts of amazing trees in person anywhere else.

This is Dan's oldest tree in his garden, sometimes referred to as "Methuselah." I assume it was so-named after the man of the same name who was reported to live to 969 years old in the Hebrew Bible. Dan has kept this tree for years in its natural state - without any styling - out of respect for the 2000+-year-old tree as well as to show visitors something they might find in the wild. This photo was taken in early April of 2016, however, since then Dan has put some approach grafts of Shimpaku juniper foliage onto this tree. Rocky mountain juniper foliage reportedly does not do well in our wet PNW climate and that fact is the main suspected cause for the slow decline this tree's health has observed in recent years.