Maple Forest: Sometimes, you just luck out.

It was mid-April 2011 and I had driven up to New England Bonsai Gardens in Bellingham, MA to pickup an elegant (in John Romano's knowledgeable words) yamadori Korean Hornbeam prebonsai. As I was on my way out, my eye was caught by a strong splash of color. What captured my attention was a forest of Japanese maples in full Spring red and yellow leaf flush. Walking over to it I noticed that it was an intriguing design and made of 7 trees in 2 groups, although one of the trees in the smaller group was a double trunk, so it seemed as if it was a 3 and 5 grouping. The trees weren't the standard straight sticks that many forests are made of, but had some nice movement and, on the left side, a long set of branches made nice negative space. I wasn't so thrilled with the blue pot, as it clashed with the red of the leaves, and it would dominate the trees when the leaves turned green in high Summer. Moreover, it had lived so long in the humid green house that a fur of fuzzy moss had enveloped the trunks to a depth of a few inches. So, I poked into the moss and soil (wouldn't any Bonsaist?) to discover that all but one of the trees did, indeed, have nice exposed roots. It had potential and, it was marked down to a clearance price. No contest of wills; I bought it. Lucky catch. My first, ever, forest.

The maple forest that caught me, immediately after purchase and scraping away most of the bad moss. That pot has to go.

At home with my trees, I quickly started removing most of the fur and saw that the bases of the trunks had been bleached white by the moss growth, but that would disappear in some time. Then, I found out that the trees were growing in akadama soil that had turned to a solid mud and would not drain water. The trees were in a swamp. It just so happened that the Greater New Haven Bonsai Society had just held an internal 75-25 auction, and I had copped a perfectly fine unglazed 19 inch tray-like pot for a dollar an inch ($19 or € 14.40, at today's rate). Just what this forest needed. An unglazed brown pot would seem like an extension of the landscape soil, and not distract from the forest. Although it was now May, an emergency repot was needed.

Not ever having created a forest (I had only designed single trees), I made a basic landscape of my own, loose soil mix that simulated a curved knoll or ridge, something like the original, but more distinctive. The plan was to have a mysterious path rise and disappear over the ridge between the two groups. After clipping the wire hold-downs, I started to remove the trees one by one, but, to my amazement, the entire forest peeled off the akadama like a sheet. And a sheet of rubber, at that, since I could stretch the completely entangled root system, but not deal with single tree placement. Nothing for it but to tease out the small feeder roots, clip the heavy ones, and fit, as best I could, over the landscape base. Stretch, pull, press, mold with my hands, until it looked reasonable. Then water it in. And, since the soil mix was so loose, I put a layer of a thin tractable moss over the entire surface to keep the landscape's shape intact until the trees' roots colonized it (deo valente). The whole process was like plastic surgery and bandaging. I put it in dappled shade and crossed my fingers.

The forest in its new pot after a month, the moss "bandage" removed and leaves clipped. Note the white residue on the trunks from the "bad" moss. But it is alive and looks healthy. The pot is nice with them, too, even if dirty. Also, note the negative space on the left. Should have clipped there a bit more.

 The trees took to their new environment wonderfully well, but was the forest an appropriate shape and form? I knew the general “rules” (odd number of trees in random groups, entire shape of the forest like the common isosceles triangle of a single tree bonsai, yadda, yadda). It complied fairly well, and, most importantly, I liked its new look. In the following month, our Society provided me with an opportunity to participate in a workshop with Jim Doyle of Nature's Way Nursery. If there is something he doesn't know about bonsai, it is not worth knowing. He has seen the elephant. I took my forest for a critique and some hours' work. Maybe it needed another serious surgery, or some drastic tweaking that I didn't know about. Jim examined it after I had explained it's history, made a crack about “akadama haters”, told me that (by accident) I had gotten the trees in an arrangement such that no tree was blocking another, that the two trees toward the center were, since taller, going to be the apex of the triangle, that I should let the branches pointing toward the other group grow (to make the path's disappearance more mysterious), that the negative space was a Good Thing ™, and that I should just clip and grow, starting with reducing the leaf mass right then. And be happy with what happened.

Sometimes, you just luck out.

The forest in Fall. Nice nebari, nice growth, gorgeous color

The Fall leaves with frost.