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Planting Ideas: Curator wants to show people the diversity of bonsai plants
Photo Courtesy of the North Carolina Arboretum
North Carolina Arboretum
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Published: October 2, 2009
ASHEVILLE - Bonsai is mysterious and exotic, conjuring visions of tea ceremonies and robe-wrapped scholars glimpsed through a haze of spring cherry blossoms. You think of gnarled pines and cascading azaleas.
Arthur Joura, the bonsai curator at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, would like to change that.
Not that there aren't pines and azaleas in the garden's collection. There are some very fine ones. But there are also forsythias, dogwoods, Key limes and even Virginia creepers.
Joura started his career in bonsai rather reluctantly when the arboretum was given a donation of about 100 bonsai plants in 1992. The donation was the gift of George and Cora Staples from Butner.
The Stapleses were ailing when they finally decided they could no longer care for their collection. The plants were ailing, too. Many were culled because they were too far gone. Others required a great deal of nursing and years of care to get back in good health.
Joura was a landscape-maintenance tech when he accepted the job of taking on the new acquisition. He was running a backhoe and building hoop houses in the garden's support area. He had no experience with bonsai. But he sensed an opportunity.
Joura went to the National Arboretum in Washington to study what is perhaps this country's greatest collection, given to the United States by Japan during the bicentennial. He learned the traditional forms and the various techniques. He went to Japan to study the art.
Somewhere along the line, Joura started to synthesize tradition and environment. The Southern Appalachians started to exert their influence over his work, and the work became more expression and less tradition.
"In Japan they can tell you the history , sales records and ownership of bonsai through generations. It will never be that in this country. It has to be something different. Its value is not in mysticism, it is in that basic need to express something of nature. You see it in any art medium. It is this tremendous expression of nature, and we use nature to express it."
In 2005, the arboretum opened the Bonsai Exhibition Garden, a sloping landscape of low shrubs that follows a dry stream bed over bridges and down serpentine paths past a selection of the arboretum's collections. Joura has plants grouped together on exhibit that have been contributed by local growers and pots made by local artisans. Each tree tells multiple stories: of their natural history, of their previous owners and of their own character.
Looking at these bonsai is more like looking at a sculpture or painting in a museum than looking at plants in a garden, except that they are living, dynamic plants.
The best of them distill the character of the plant in miniature; they condense and clarify the essence of nature. Several native plants on exhibit exemplify this theme.
"The use of native plants connects with the arboretum's mission of celebrating the plants of the Southern Appalachians," Joura said.
No where is this mission better expressed than in Joura's creation of miniature landscapes that reflect particular eco-regions of the mountains.
Two that visitors might pass, if they choose to take the Blue Ridge Parkway to the arboretum, are Mount Mitchell and Graveyard Fields.
Joura's version of Mount Mitchell would fit on a large coffee table. The composition centers on a dead snag rising from an evergreen understory.
It is reminiscent of the devastated trees lining the highest peaks of the Appalachians that have fallen to acid rain and insect infestation.
"You have to find the hook when you are creating these landscapes," Joura said. "You have to identify the characteristic that will immediately define the space."
For Graveyard Fields, an area of open fields studded with groves of trees and thick clusters of shrubs on the Parkway, the identifying characteristic is blueberries. "Many people come to this area to gather blueberries in the summer, so I knew I had to include them."
Often Joura has to use exotic plant material to represent these native habitats. The native plants simply cannot be reduced in size enough to be proportionate to the composition. In creating a bonsai rendition of Roan Mountain, Joura used a Japanese azalea to represent the rhododendrons that are so emblematic of this site.
Next weekend the North Carolina Arboretum will hold the 14th annual Carolina Bonsai Expo, considered the largest bonsai gathering in the Southeast. Exhibitors from across a six-state region will participate in a juried bonsai show. There will be workshops, a marketplace and free demonstrations. There is a $6 parking fee at the arboretum. Autumn colors should also be well on their way.
For more information see ncarboretum.org.
If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.
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