NABF Newsletter #5

Feature #3

The Bonsai Transformation,
A Story Of One Vendor

By Lynn Boyd

Tree is thought to be a Mugo pine, and purchased about 5 years ago from a man whose wife had passed away. The tag indicated the tree was purchased from Garland nursery in 1948. It was just a busy shrub with not much bonsai styling. Several repots and stylings later it is a very attractive bonsai.

Art is said philosophically to transform life. We wonder can such a transformation result from our bonsai. Different art forms surely bring about different transformations. As a retired art teacher I am prone to notice as time passes what takes place with my students and particularly, now, my friends in bonsai art. How has it transformed a life? The constant requirements and attention to our trees is different than the painter's finished, framed work. Both require dedication and devotion, but very differently. With bonsai we share, uniquely, vital life situations. So, we do not postpone a responsibility, such a decision may have a critical outcome.

Applying such a concept of art to those in my bonsai community I can see the material changes in their lives to more outdoor time, club attendance, and bonsai workshops. Some are immersed, deeply, some find it a casual, relaxing pastime. Some become more involved as time passes and spread their enthusiasm, drawing others in with their exciting creative energy and the beauty of trees. Beyond the material changes in their time and effort they admit spiritual effects from the beauty they create and in caring for their trees. Regardless of some differences as artists the devotion to meet the requirements of our trees makes us much the same.

In training for over 15 years. It was found as overgrown material at an abandoned nursery. It was reduced by two thirds. It is one of Diane’s favorite trees.

There is in my bonsai life someone whom I have seen develop through the stages from a small beginning when I was the first person to buy one of her bonsai at a small sale. Time passed with these stages, and she has now become the owner of a new warehouse full of imported tools and pots to serve the clubs that surround the mid-valley area in Oregon. Most important to her is the beautiful eight acres for planting pre-bonsai trees. I have seen how bonsai transformed her life as gradually a whole bonsai community developed around her enthusiasm and her struggle to find and supply the tools and workshops and trees that kept maturing artists and new ones exchanging their experiences and pleasures.

From the beginning she fostered the gradual transformations of many from pleasure in small trees to eager workshop attendants. She saw in advance the needs of a growing bonsai community as she carried on her every day work in a local popular nursery. She managed to integrate her nursery job with her bonsai interest and arranged to give small workshops herself to those interested. Eventually clubs formed and more advanced skills were brought in with expert workshops that raised the standard of the local art. She struggled for space at the nursery to provide supplies as interest increased, imports began to be needed. Her time became limited; she moved onto the nursery grounds to watch over the greenhouses for bonsai.

A view of some of Diane’s bonsai on outdoor benches.

Her life was now centered around bonsai – in its every aspect. Still there was more to be done – more needed. The nursery no longer had space to expand. Her work load called for more helpers. The time had come for a serious change.

The greatest effort, yet, in her support has happened: large greenhouses, new and brilliant with promise, eight acres of healthy growing land along a river that can provide irrigation, room for warehouses, already one stocked with imported pots and tools. The first trident maple whips are in the ground for a beginning. For the first time a real house for herself that overlooks 8 acres dedicated to bonsai. For the first time there can be a future with adequate supplies and trees for the hundreds who have depended on her for their needs. The incoming orders will move faster throughout the state.

Those from the Willamette Valley of Oregon interested in bonsai, and reaching for deeper artistry will say immediately, "It must be Diane Lund!" It is!

A view across one of the greenhouses full of stock.

Diane's first sight of bonsai was in Alaska at 18-19 years of age when she worked for a nursery as her first job. She asked what were the trees sitting in a corner - three small and beautiful trees she has never forgotten. They started a series of changes in her life, one was to become a transformation by bonsai as it became her daily focus. From Alaska she came to Garland's Nursery in Corvallis, Oregon on the urging of a friend. A local club had earlier disbanded, the enthusiasm had not been there. She brought it all to life and has kept it so. The years have passed – 30 years.

I think many vendors may have followed similar lives of transformation, a necessary sustaining of their spirit that drives them to sustain bonsai. I now believe it is not a dexterity of hand that produces the greatest involvement in the art, but the degree of passion to sustain its growth.
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Another philosophical statement I am familiar with ends my story of Diane. “The artist is not, after all, a special kind of man or woman; each man or woman is a special kind of artist.” Diane's bonsai dedication reflects this special quality in the inspiring influence she has shown to others as a constant guide, a hard-working supplier of trees and tools, a searcher for masters to present workshops. Throughout these reaches for more and better bonsai for herself, friends and growing number of clients she followed that artistic instinct that recognizes, then takes the next step up in the transformation of an art and artist to a higher plane.