Alameda expert carves out a bonsai bonanza
25-year artist teaches a class, runs a blog, releases how-to-book on the ancient art
In forests where even the smallest of us stand tall, Jonas Dupuich is head and shoulders above.
For more than 25 years, the Alameda resident has been snipping, wiring, pruning and practicing a level of patience that would make Job look like a jittery day trader. Now, the bonsai expert has published a book to help the rest of us learn the ancient art of “tray planting.”
Dupuich teaches and lectures on bonsai throughout the Bay Area, as well as around the country. He also has a popular blog, Bonsai Tonight, and just published “The Little Book of Bonsai — An Easy Guide to Caring for Your Bonsai Tree” (Ten Speed Press, $15).
To the uninitiated, bonsai, which in Japanese translates to “tray planting,” is the practice of keeping full-sized trees small and training them into artistic and pleasing forms. Japanese bonsai experts have practiced the art for centuries.
For Dupuich, who is recognized as one of the leading bonsai experts, his passion for the art developed not long out of college when, while working in his father’s nursery, he had a chance encounter with a bonsai master.
As Dupuich was halfheartedly pruning a small pine, a man approached and began offering advice, which Dupuich says he instinctively followed. Later, the man offered to take the scraggly, neglected pine tree home and “style it,” a term that Dupuich was unfamiliar with.
“I hadn’t even really liked the tree,” Dupuich says, “but when he brought it back, I was able to see it in a different way, and something just clicked.”
As it turned out, Dupuich’s accidental mentor was Boon Manakitivipart, a well-known bonsai artist celebrated for his innovative techniques, unique bonsai styling and creative teaching methods. The two men became close friends.
From that moment on, Dupuich’s plans for a teaching career in English literature vanished. He joined a local bonsai club and started growing a few of his own trees.
Bonsai — pronounced “bone-sigh” — has seen a resurgence in the United States in the past decade. It’s nowhere near succulent levels of popularity, but an increasing number of people, especially millennials, is showing an interest.
The appeal is easy to understand. We have a fascination for all things miniaturized — and then there’s the idea of having a piece of beautiful nature at your fingertips. Dupuich believes many people are drawn to bonsai because it gives them something to care for and nurture.
Dupuich’s collection of trees is breathtaking. Many are pines, some grown from seed, others harvested from mountaintops. The collection also includes oaks, redwoods and maples. The trees’ ages range from 10 to 600 years old.
It’s a hobby with staying power.
Not every tree is suitable for bonsai, of course, but many are. It can take years of work to develop the shape and appearance, but Dupuich says it’s worth it.
In his classes, Dupuich says, he often wishes he could give his students two superpowers. The ability to visualize the tree trunk as separate from limbs and leaves would allow students to better see the shape and form, and the ability to imagine the future would let them see how the tree could look years from now.
Those powers of imagination would help them make choices on what to prune, what to leave, and what to mold and develop so that the tree fulfills that vision in 20 or 30 years.
“Bonsai definitely is about delayed gratification,” Dupuich says.
Trees grown as bonsai are all full-sized trees purposefully kept small. Put them in the ground, Dupuich says, and in optimal conditions they’ll grow to their full height, reaching 20 feet and higher.
But the bonsai artist keeps the tree small using a variety of methods, including pruning and manipulating the roots with the bonsai planting medium. Small, finer roots produce smaller trees.
The flowers and fruit on the trees remain full sized, or close to it. There’s no fooling genetics, Dupuich says.
Of the country’s 200 bonsai clubs, many are centered in California. The Bay Area alone has more than a dozen. And of the nation’s 14 most famous public bonsai gardens, California has three — the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt in Oakland, the Bonsai Collection at the Huntington in San Marino and the Clark Bonsai Collection in Fresno.
Dupuich is working on a Bay Area-centered bonsai show, tentatively scheduled for fall 2021. He smiles broadly — he’s giving would-be presenters a couple of years to get their trees looking their best.
Meanwhile, for those interested in cultivating their own bonsai, a seedling costs less than $10, and then, Dupuich says, “you have an entire year to keep it alive and think about your vision” before you have to make a single snip.