San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
A big interest in little trees
Gabe Hernandez loves nature, but living in the city, especially while working from home during the pandemic, made it hard to get out into the wilderness.
“So I decided to bring a little nature to me,” said Hernandez, a professional photographer.
And by “little,” he means little. He used his time at home to begin learning the ancient Japanese art of bonsai, which involves carefully pruning and training ordinary trees so they appear like mature trees but shrunken.
“I always thought these tiny trees are so cool,” he said. “I bought a bonsai tree once before, but I killed it. This time I did a lot of research, watching videos on YouTube and even joining the
San Antonio Bonsai Society.”
Today Hernandez tends a small forest of about 50 trees bought at local nurseries — bald cypresses, live oaks, cedar elms — that he carefully waters each morning. It’s a 10-minute ritual he calls peaceful and calming. It’ll take years, but he hopes to slowly transform them into artfully crafted miniatures.
“Doing bonsai really helped get me through the pandemic,” he said.
He’s not alone.
Bonsai trees may be tiny, but interest in them has grown over the past year or so. The San Antonio Bonsai Society has seen its dues-paying membership almost double over the past 18 months to 86, President Ryan Odegaard says.
“Bonsai is something you can do in your own backyard, where you can stay safe and healthy,” he said.
Other circumstances are driving bonsai’s popularity, too. The 1984 release of the first “The Karate Kid” film, which featured several scenes of Daniel LaRusso’s karate mentor, Mr. Miyagi, tending his little trees, boosted their popularity in the 1980s.
“After that you started seeing people selling bonsai on the side of the road,” said Mark Fields, president of the American Bonsai Society.
The popular Netflix series
“Cobra Kai,” a follow-up to the “Karate Kid” series, may cause a similar uptick in interest. In this new show, LaRusso is a successful auto dealer who gives every new car buyer a free bonsai. He also uses the patience needed to grow and train bonsai as a teaching lesson for a troubled young man.
But there's also the connection to nature the trees provide.
“I think a lot of younger people are getting into bonsai because they don't spend a lot of time outdoors,” said David Rizwan, who works in medical device design. “They're finding it helps satisfy their fascination with nature. Plus there's the coolness factor in the way the trees look and the fact that so many of them are so old.”
The National Bonsai Foundation in Washington, D.C., often gets calls from people interested in learning about the art, and executive director Bobbie Alexander said many are parents asking how to get their children interested in the hobby.
“I've got a list of about 10 people I've promised to give a personal tour to of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, which the foundation supports,” she said. (Penjing is an ancient Chinese art that involves creating miniature landscapes, often including bonsai.) “We also recently launched a blog series on the future of bonsai that will spotlight young people who are beginning to practice the art.”
Properly cared for, these tiny trees can live hundreds of years. Perhaps the most famous is the almost 400-year-old Japanese
white pine a family in Hiroshima tended for six generations, until the 1945 atomic bomb blast. The family and the tree survived, and they donated the tree to the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.
Today there are bonsai clubs in every state in the country, and several clubs on the West Coast have hundreds of members.
Many new hobbyists say they're surprised to learn that almost any tree can be trained to become a bonsai.
“I thought bonsai was a specific species of tree,” said Joe Hoyt, an engineer who started growing trees about 2 ½ years ago. “But you can do it with almost any kind.”
This includes South Texas natives such as crepe myrtle, mesquite and huisache.
“They won't look like the classic Japanese bonsai, but it can be done,” Odegaard said.
Generally, trees with large leaves, such as sycamores, don't work because the leaves will be out of proportion with the rest of the tree.
Bonsai takes patience. Crafting a tree from a seed or cutting can take 10 to 15 years or more. For the impatient, completed bonsai trees are sold at exhibitions, nurseries, even big-box stores.
However trees are acquired, longtime aficionados say bonsai is just the balm for stressful times.
“When you see a beautiful tree it stirs something in you,” said Jack Rice, a San Antonio foundry manager who has collected 300 to 400 trees, some as old as 150 years, over 40 years. “I have a high-stress job, but after I come home and go outside to water my trees, I can talk to my wife again.”