NABF Newsletter #5

Feature #5

Elandan Gardens
The History and Adventure

By Diane Robinson
Photos by Abdel, used by permission, Copyright.

In November 1994, Elandan Gardens opened its gates and offered the majesty of a native northwest garden on the shores of Puget Sound. Sculptured stones, wood fragments of ancient forest trees and water vistas were artfully staged to provide the open-air gallery that celebrates the Dan Robinson Bonsai Collection.

It began with a blank canvas. A six-acre, flat and nearly treeless abandoned landfill awaited the artist’s touch. Robinson orchestrated his family and community volunteers to follow his direction and inspiration. He enjoyed extraordinary commitment. A year of intense construction yielded a garden museum, a gift gallery, and a community focus of pride.

Elandan Gardens embodies a western tradition in landscape design. Bold and forged from nature, Robinson re-creates and organizes nature in stasis; using intuitive wabi sabi, feng shui, and complete balance; bringing to mind the emotions and peace found in extraordinary Japanese gardens and the drama embodied in Chinese gardens. Robinson used a vast inventory of Black Pines trained from seed he brought from Korea in the mid-Sixties. Those trees, along with a collection of large specimen Japanese maples, species Rhododendrons, and magnificent stones, transformed a wasteland into a poetic declaration of optimism. Typical of the western experience, Elandan Gardens’ visitors often come away with something they didn’t expect; they are recharged and inspired.

The heart of Elandan Gardens is the bonsai collection. Each tree is identified with a sign describing the origins and development of the bonsai. The collection represents over 45 years of bonsai experience. Robinson’s approach to contemporary bonsai expression has often confounded strict constructionists. But stylistic concepts cannot define Robinson’s work. In the end his work, his carvings, and his bonsai represent intellect, imagination, order and passion.
In the 1990’s Dan Robinson’s work was at its most experimental.

Earlier works performed on stage and off represented a break from stylistic rules established by interpreters of an art form practiced widely in East Asia and largely unknown in the west until the last half of the last century. Frank Okimura from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden recognized Dan Robinson as a visionary who would literally carve his way between artistic abstractionists and classical practitioners. Mr. Okimura declared Dan Robinson “the Picasso of Bonsai” in 1978 when he used a chain-saw to turn an upright collected Ponderosa Pine into a cascade. Lines were drawn at that convention; none of them can be found at Elandan Gardens.

Six acres of opportunity. A place to share the layers of knowledge collected in nearly every state on myriads of different trees. A center to attract novice enthusiasts, a gallery to provide the backdrop for a life-work. Often students spend the weekend learning a new vision of bonsai. There is no curriculum in the Elandan School of Bonsai, but a shared vision of nature and what is possible emerges, and the students leave breathless and emancipated.

A recent student of bonsai from Grass Valley, California toured Elandan Gardens and asked about the artist who created the bonsai trees. She had heard the “Picasso of Bonsai” attribution from a friend who encouraged her to visit. She felt the permission for creativity in the garden, and about the artist whom she has yet to meet, she declared him to be the “Indiana Jones of Bonsai”. Picasso would be jealous.

Japanese Black Pine - 42 years from seed.

American Larch, 250 years.

Pond Cypress, 600 years.

Shimpaku grafted onto Sierra juniper , 450 years.