The Curator’s Journal by Bonsai Curator Arthur Joura offers the ultimate insider’s view of bonsai at The North Carolina Arboretum. Regular entries chronicle growing an art and growing an enterprise. Some journal entries will be long and others more brief; some will be mostly words and others mostly pictures; some will be close-up studies of detail and others will step back to take in the wider scene.

The path will not be linear, but all the entries will be steps on a journey. You’re invited to come along.

Preview the latest entries and resources offered below. With Joura as a knowledgeable guide, you can forgo the map and travel in time to meet remarkable trees, each with stories and life lessons worth sharing.

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REcent Journal Entries

Featured
Naturalism
Naturalism

This week’s entry once again features a video derived from the online educational programs offered during the shutdown of 2020. This program focuses on the concept of naturalism as it applies to the shaping of little trees, a subject of great importance to bonsai at The North Carolina Arboretum. This program provides a good introductory overview of the concept and the way it has played out with some of the trees in our collection.

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Last Call
Last Call

The day before the bonsai were removed, I took my camera and made one last walk through the garden to photograph them. We had forty one specimens on display and I captured an image of each. They are presented to you here, along with a note that I photographed them as I found them. The trees were not cleaned up in any way. What you see as you look at these pictures is just how the garden display would have been if you walked in that last day for one final look.

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Felton - Part 1
Felton - Part 1

I made contact with Felton on my first visit with the Triangle Bonsai Society in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1995. He was that group's resident sensei and he would have been about seventy four years old at the time. I had heard his name before that, though, because it seemed all the bonsai people of the day knew Felton.

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Wabi-Sabi, Maybe?
Wabi-Sabi, Maybe?

When I'd ask people what they meant by wabi-sabi their definitions were vague or squishy, and then one day somebody told me that it was a Japanese thing and most Westerners could never understand it. That sealed it for me. I put wabi-sabi aside in a big box where I kept all that sort of stuff and decided I shouldn't waste time worrying about something I probably could never understand anyway.

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Garden Autumn
Garden Autumn

It never comes all at once. Photos of autumn color in the landscape, and the memories of autumn’s glories we keep in our minds, typically capture the peak of the season. This is only one phase of autumn, however, a fraction amounting to a few days.

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Explore Entries By Collection


People are often interested in a specific topic within the art of bonsai. The journal entries have been sorted to reflect that, making it easier for readers to find entries covering material they would like to read about in greater depth.

 
 

A SMALL Sampling OF Bonsai IN THE Arboretum’s COLLECTION

Captions may not be supported when viewing on a mobile device. Find a list of the bonsai currently on display here.

“We use bonsai as an interpretive tool to help excite people about nature, to help engage them, to make their visit to the Arboretum special... That focus exclusively on the natural aspect, that’s what sets us apart. Here, bonsai is a way for people to see nature differently. ”
— Arthur Joura