The art and soul of BONSAI

  • Story by Debra Prinzing / Special to The Herald
  • Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:00pm
  • Life

In this rush-rush world, the art and science of bonsai gardening is a somewhat anti-establishment endeavor. Patience and discipline work hand-in-hand as bonsai masters turn plants that nature intended to grow 20 feet tall into sculpted specimens only 20 inches tall, suitable for displaying in tiny glazed pots.

If you’ve attended the Northwest Flower &Garden Show in recent years, you’ve probably caught a glimpse of this mystical brand of horticulture. Dan Robinson, who owns Elandan Gardens with his wife, Diane Robinson, is frequently seen in a Northwest-style display garden of his own making, perched on a bench as he gives single-minded attention to a small-scale pine tree, taking tiny snips or using pliable wire to train stems into bonsai forms.

Patience is only part of the practice of bonsai, which the Robinsons celebrate at the six-acre Elandan Gardens on Bremerton’s Sinclair Inlet. “I love my time really concentrating on the trees,” he explained. “I spent the last two days pruning one 12-foot black pine.”

Robinson begins many conversations about his craft with a lesson on pronouncing the term bonsai. Say “bone-sigh,” he says, which is translated as “tree in a pot.” “Do not say ‘banzai,’” he warned. “That means ‘Hail the emperor – I’m ready to die for you’ in Japanese.”

Okay. Now we know. With its softer intonations, bone-sigh is a calmer, more peaceful way to describe the art of shaping trees.

The drive to collect and catalog unusual plants has been a lifelong pursuit for Dan Robinson, now in his 60s. Born in Seattle, he and his family moved often during boyhood, following his father’s career as a sociology professor. Many summers brought Robinson back to the Northwest, where he spent time with grandparents in the south Puget Sound area near Shelton. “I was always intrigued by the natural shapes of trees and their forms,” Robinson recalled. “Even as a small kid, I was interested in plants, so all my life I’ve more or less been planting trees.”

The family lived for a time in Hollywood, Calif., where Robinson discovered cactus plants. “My first collecting penchant began in the fifth grade when I’d bring cactuses back from Palm Springs and plant them in my yard. I don’t know what that was all about, but I built a desert scene with an adobe wall – a semblance of landscaping in our yard,” he recalled.

After finishing high school in the Chicago area, Robinson returned to Seattle as a University of Washington student.

While studying forestry, botany, biology and education, Robinson earned his living working for an uncle’s Seattle-area landscaping business. “He would send me around to collect native trees, such as alpine firs, alpine hemlocks and vine maples. He knew I could find interesting things.”

As is still the case, it’s often possible to collect trees on public or private lands with the proper permits, Robinson noted. “I would talk with the Forest Service guys and get permission.”

His early experience as a “tree sleuth” has become a lifelong endeavor, as Robinson delights in discovering scruffy, battered or naturally stunted trees in obscure locations. “I do a lot of work to bring out their beauty and character,” he acknowledged. “I’m very excellent at transplanting trees. I’m moving Mother Nature around.”

Robinson left college in the early 1960s and was subsequently drafted into military service. It’s no surprise to learn that he continued collecting and studying trees while serving in Korea as a water purification specialist. “I was in the middle of Korea and the mountains all around me were covered with pine trees. Every one of them was crooked,” Robinson said. Through a friendship with an old Korean tree collector, Robinson came back to the United States with seeds of red and black pines, many of which he’s planted and nurtured to large trees on display at Elandan Gardens.

After military service, Robinson returned to the Northwest and his landscape contracting business. Soon after he and Diane were married, he joined the Bremerton Fire Department. “I spent 25 years there, still running my landscaping business and collecting trees. Life has been full of little crooked bonsai trees and landscaping projects.”

Dan Robinson retired from the fire department in 1991 and began searching for property where he could display his vast bonsai collection, moving it from the family’s crowded backyard.

“One of my motivations in having a great collection of bonsai trees was to create a forum for them,” Robinson said. “I had these great resources, like a 50-foot cedar snag or a piece of a giant root system, and in spite of having great clients, no one had used them.”

The Robinsons wanted to establish a public display garden along a well-traveled spot. They looked as far away as Port Townsend, but eventually discovered a seven-acre parcel once used as a municipal garbage dump by the city of Bremerton. Capped over in the early 1950s and later used as a log-sorting yard, the slender strip of land lies between Highway 16 and Sinclair Inlet.

Diane Robinson named the spot Elandan, a combination of the French word elan, which means courageous, and her husband’s first name.

While picturesque, the site has been a landscaper’s challenge. “There were only three trees on the property – two Douglas firs, a grove of cottonwood, blackberries and Scotch broom so dense that it didn’t allow the fir seedlings to germinate,” Robinson recalled. When he and his crew dug down a foot or deeper, they discovered burned and charred cans, bottles and other garbage. “We started out with 35,000 yards of fill bankrun sandy gravel – to create topsoil. Since then we’ve hauled in over 200,000 yards of fill to give us something to work with.”

In its 10th year, Elandan Gardens is an otherworldly landscape that conveys a feeling of great maturity, thanks to centuries-old bonsai trees. Visitors can stroll the nursery and gift gallery (Diane Robinson and daughter Shanna also operate an interior design service here) and have a picnic on the grounds near Sinclair Inlet. The Robinsons charge a fee of $5 to tour the bonsai display garden.

You’ll see a rotating display of nearly 200 bonsai trees from Dan Robinson’s collection, displayed along 1,500 feet of waterfront. Enormous granite rocks, gnarled trees, mossy logs, driftwood and cedar snags provide the ideal backdrop to the bonsai display. Each of the bonsai trees is well documented, with a sign that describes its pedigree, its estimated age based on Robinson’s evaluation of the tree rings, and a story about its acquisition. Slabs of slate resting on upended timber posts serve as pedestals for each bonsai.

A walking trail circles around a manmade pond. “It’s like taking a 20-mile hike in a small loop,” Robinson said.

For those who thought the art of bonsai was exclusive to pines, the tree diversity here is surprising. Elandan’s collection ranges from Korean hornbeams dating to the late 1800s and early 1900s to Sierra junipers that Robinson estimates are 500 to 1,000 years old. Flowering plants are especially attractive in bonsai form, including the 95-year-old climbing hydrangea and a bougainvillea nearly as old.

The hunt for awesome trees doesn’t end. Robinson and a few other fanatics have recently discovered a secret spot on Vancouver Island where naturally stunted pines have apparently grown untouched for generations.

Robinson first viewed the area from an airplane above and spent about five year with a friend trying to track down a logging road that reached it. They’ve since received permission from the landowner to obtain numerous crooked trees.

“They have great, gnarly trunks and bark – and they’re maybe two feet tall,” Robinson said. “This is like the mother lode for me.”

Debra Prinzing is a regular contributor to Home &Garden and the editor of “The Northwest Gardeners’ Resource Directory.” Send e-mail to Dkprinzing@aol.com.

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