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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The forest in Fall. Nice nebari, nice growth, gorgeous color |
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| The Fall leaves with frost. |
