Masters of Japanese bonsai and Chinese penjing techniques are gardening artists. The tiny trees they meticulously shape— ranging in age from newborn to centenarian — create a sense of full-grown trees in their natural surroundings while taking up only the space of a coffee table. Perfecting such miniature masterpieces is truly the pinnacle of gardening skill.
A well-trained bonsai or penjing specimen should give the impression of being a tree, not a shrub. Trees have well-defined foliage layers with open areas between them, while shrubs are masses of foliage that need pruning to define and improve their branch structure.
Though many people believe such trees are simply dwarfed versions of natural trees, the truth of the art form lies in the creation of the image. Masters manipulate potentially full-sized trees and mold them into beautiful pieces of art that, with proper care, can last for generations—sometimes centuries. But take a bonsai or penjing tree out of its pot and plant it in the ground, and it’ll reach its full, normal height.
Masters coax the roots of penjing or bonsai specimens over large rocks placed at the base of young trees or shrubs in
The idea of growing and refining a tree in miniature in the confines of a glazed clay pot is intriguing and found to be a challenge to many who have grown trees or other plants with success.
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training. The roots of bonsai plants often rise in sculptural shapes above the stones.
Some penjing has been trained, or molded, into the shape of a dragon, with one of its larger branches looking like a head and another, a tail. Eventually, the art of penjing migrated from China through Korea to Japan. The Japanese term “bonsai” refers both to the plant and to the pot or tray in which it sits. The two must complement each other to create visual harmony.
Bonsai come in all sizes: miniature (six inches tall or less), small (six to 12 inches), medium (12 to 24 inches), and large (24 to 48 inches).
It’s certainly not easy to create a miniaturized tree, and it can be daunting countless days, months, and years can be spent learning techniques for creating and maintaining bonsai and penjing. With practice, you can shape a tree by removing a branch, allowing one to develop in a desirable location, or allowing the trunk to grow more.
Balcony view of one of the four rooms at the National Bonsai Exhibition held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. This room has large size bonsai while the room on the upper left has medium size bonsai.
Repotting lets you place the trunk where you’d like in the pot, wiring lets you alter the position of the branches, and pruning keeps the branches short. Creating a bonsai from seed can be tricky. So one popular way is to start by choosing a nursery tree, shrub, or even a vine, then potting and beginning to style your bonsai—a step called “pre-bonsai” or “bonsai in training.” This process of training a plant in a pot takes several years. With proper care and the appropriate techniques, one
day it may earn the title of “masterpiece.”
While training a plant, one may need to replace the original pot as the tree gets bigger, and special attention needs to be given to drainage and soil mixes so that the tree remains healthy. Once fully formed, a bonsai will have a thick trunk, a shape like the normal-sized tree, branches of the right size and in the right place, leaves that are as small as they can get, and a pot perfectly matched to the style and color of the tree. This maintenance process requires years of trimming and restyling, but it’s very satisfying to the owners and gives a deep sense of artistic pleasure.
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