Posts tagged summer 2025
Maymont

Naturalistic bonsai requires the study of trees in nature, with an eye toward truly seeing what trees do and understanding why they do it. That is the big attraction for me in coming to a place like Maymont. Here there are genuinely old trees of different species, growing out in the open where they can fully express themselves while being viewable from all angles, near and far.

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After Japan

We were new and there were many ideas about what The North Carolina Arboretum should be, and these were coming in all the time from various corners of special interest. The Arboretum wouldn't be able to satisfy all of them and we were apparently not in a rush to fully commit to any of them.

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Original Boxes

The North Carolina Arboretum’s bonsai enterprise began with a donation of little trees in 1992. Visitors, when they hear this story, often ask how many of those original trees remain in the collection. As usual when a question arises regarding numbers, I’m obliged to truthfully respond that I don’t know.

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Crapemyrtle and Scots Pine

On the surface of it, there’s not much connecting crapemyrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) beyond the fact that both are woody plant species. Crapemyrtle is a deciduous tree originally from southern parts of Asia and Australia, while Scots pine is a coniferous evergreen native to mostly northern Europe. The two subjects of this entry, however, share several points of commonality.

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