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Chapter 7. Bonsai At The Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Within recent years the Brooklyn Batanic Garden has become recognized as one of the leading American sources of information on bonsai culture. The Garden has twice, in the last few years, brought bonsai experts from Japan not only to improve the quality of plants in the Garden's collection, but also to offer advanced courses in bonsai to all who might be interested. From one to two hundred people have taken such courses each year.

Friends of the Botanic Garden have made it possible to import many fine bonsai from Japan. In addition, our Japanese garden caretaker-gardener has trained additional plants from seedlings, cuttings and small nursery stock. Our collection has thus increased in size, and in addition a great many species and varieties have been tested to determine their suitability for bonsai.

In order to measure the expanding popular interest in bonsai culture, the Garden has from year to year staged small public exhibitions of bonsai, grown by amateur enthusiasts. This project has been linked to an annual plant sale sponsored by the Women's Auxiliary for the benefit of the Botanic Garden. Hundreds of visitors come to see the plants and to purchase surplus bonsai specimens, authentic imported containers, and accessories.

Buhle - Finns virginiana bonsai, about 100 years old. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Holsten

Japanese white pine in Brooklyn Botanic Garden collection. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Phipps

Small-fruited crabapple in early autumn. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Holsten to the Botanic Garden collection

Same tree in winter, two years earlier, showing the branches trained in position by wiring

Maple "forest" in winter (trident maple, Acer buer-perianum). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Phipps to the Botanic Garden collection

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