NABF Newsletter #5

Feature #7

The Bonsai Job of the Century

By Sharon Muth

How does one land the "Bonsai job of the century"? Here is the story.... In the summer of 1988, while very involved with my business, Bonsai Northwest, and active in "Bonsai Clubs International", I got a call from Mr. Bob Seldon, a vice president at Weyerhaeuser Company. He asked if I could be persuaded to assist in putting together a bonsai exhibit that would be situated on the campus grounds of the Weyerhaeuser corporate headquarters.

The outline of the job was fairly simple; purchase fifty world class bonsai from the countries around the Pacific Rim, get them imported and transported to Federal Way, Washington and complete the job by the fall of 1989. Now, who of us could refuse this opportunity and challenge?

The committee of three, Leo Cunningham, former president of the American Bonsai Society, and Taki Nagasawa, owner of Green River Nursery in Kent Washington, and myself, took up the challenge. We were given a budget, three Instamatic cameras and the green light to go!

Before we even considered a single tree we helped in the process for determining the site of the garden and the layout of the site. Three possible areas in the corporate campus were considered. The one chosen is adjacent to the Rhodendron Species garden, and if you get the opportunity to visit the facility you will see how the two gardens blend beautifully with a common courtyard. Then the actual layout had to be considered. It was determined that each bonsai should be displayed on a pedestal that showcased each as a separate work of art, with a plain neutral background yet surrounded by landscaping that accented the trees and the entire display.

Next we drafted a plan. Finding fifty trees, representing the countries of the Pacific Rim, and representing as many varieties and bonsai styles as possible is not as easy as it would seem. We also had to consider trees that would balance the seasons; flowering, fruiting, and winter silhouette. They all had to be on the large size AND they had to be adaptable to the Northwest climate. Once we had a plan we began our search.

First stop was Bill Valavanis's September symposium. The number one tree was purchased from Brussels Martin, a ginkgo. Forty-nine bonsai to go.

Our travels took us to the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver areas in the US. Our first Canadian tree, a Shore Pine by Jack Sullivan, was sitting in our back yard at Bonsai Northwest. Jack was selling it on consignment. Then in January of 1989 I had to travel to Taiwan for my business, and with camera in hand set about photographing as many trees as I could. When I got home the three of us poured over the photos and made our choices. In March I flew back to Taiwan to supervise the washing and packing of the trees to be air-freighted to Seattle. Mr. Lee and Amy Liang Chang greatly helped with the logistics. If you have seen Amy's black pine you can see that it was not a easy job to get it prepared and delivered to the airport - and the pine was one of six trees that flew to SeaTac airport that day.

Our Denver trip took place in winter. It was cold and snowy, but we found some good trees. Harold Sasaki and Dick Meleney helped us deliver the trees to United Airlines cargo facility where we personally packed them into an LD-3 cargo container for the flight home. Bob Kataoka’s " Ronin" forest had been on its stone slab, but due to its being on the ground for at least a year the roots had crawled over the edge and into the surrounding soil. We made quite a mess of that LD-3. We flew home on the same plane, went directly to air cargo at SeaTac, and claimed our trees.

Los Angeles was of course an especially fertile area for great bonsai. So many of the "Bonsai Greats" had wonderful collections we could look at. First we contacted John Naka and asked to see his collection and to see if he would persuade his fellow bonsai friends to open their gardens to us. His help was fantastic. We spent four days driving around the Los Angeles area to see ten collections and found outstanding trees, with great history created by bonsai legends. It was a very successful trip! Later in the spring, my husband Mike and I flew to Los Angeles and rented a fifty-foot climate controlled truck and drove from garden to garden on the Los Angeles freeways. We gathered our purchases and donations, then drove to the Bay area for further pickups and then onward to Washington.

Over the course of that year, Leo, Taki and I rekindled many friendships with people we knew from the many bonsai conventions we attended, and the tours we took together, and we also met quite a few new and wonderful bonsai people and their families. Mrs. Bob Kataoka and her daughter Lily made us so welcome in Denver. Mr. Toichi Domoto, already in his nineties walked us through his nursery for over an hour, telling us of its history as well as his own personal story. My favorite story is that of the journey of the eight foot Trident Maple that our garden is so proud to have. It came to the US in 1915 from Japan. At the end of that memorable day Mr. Domoto sent each of us home with a bag of ripe persimmons from his back yard.

Did we accomplish our mission? I think we did. We didn't find that perfect formal upright we were searching for, and we missed a few of the countries on the Pacific Rim, and we did choose two trees that didn't exactly fit the Pacific Rim origin criteria - the Olive and Blue Atlas Cedar-, but they are such great trees that I am glad we have them. We stayed within our budget, and all the trees were on site at the grand opening in the fall of 1989. Since that day, fifty more trees have been added to the collection, allowing curator David DeGroot to have a good choice of trees to rotate from display to recovery areas.

This was a wonderful experience, and to enjoy it with two of my very best friends and their wives, Vernette and Haru, and to have the outcome such a truly fantastic bonsai display. Well, what can I say, it was the "Bonsai job of the Century".