The origins of bonsai tree can be traced back approximately 2,000 years, to the Chinese practice of penjing, which involved recreating miniature landscapes. Sometime around the sixth century, Japanese diplomats and students travelling to China brought the art back home. Unlike penjing though, the Japanese focused on individual trees, and bonsai, as we know it, was born. Ryan Neil, who discovered the art at the age of 12 at a local county fair in Colorado, hopes to breathe new life into this ancient craft by giving it contemporary relevance.
Bonsai Tree: The Origins
After training under bonsai master Masahiko Kimura in Japan for six years, Neil returned to America and started Bonsai Mirai—a nursery that has, since, successfully applied the age-old practice to native American trees. Unlike traditional Japanese bonsai that is structured, Neil’s version may be described as raw and unbridled, with miniature versions of ponderosa pine, Rocky Mountain juniper and the limber pine—all native to Colorado, where Neil grew up.
Bonsai Tree: Design Meets Science
Neil believes that each practitioner connects with a tree in their own unique way. “The marriage of science and aesthetics becomes the basis for every individual artist’s approach. How well they can master the horticultural techniques, the health of the tree, and how they realise their visual interpretations—that’s what defines whether somebody is truly proficient at bonsai or not.”
Bonsai Tree: The Perfect Bonsai
The dedication and effort that go into the cultivation of bonsai means that each tree commands a price—they start at $2,500 (around INR 1,70,000) and go up to $750,000 (around INR 520,00,000). Neil believes it all boils down to the uniqueness of each tree, with certain trees having “the perfect combination of every single desirable aspect of that particular species—the deadwood, where it is located on the tree, the movement in the trunk, the placement of the branches, the asymmetry of the design, its meshing with the perfect container to maximise that aesthetic, the health, the vigour and the age”.
Bonsai Tree: Future Plans
Through bonsai, Neil hopes to emphasise the importance of nature in human life. “What I want to convey, using this simulacrum of the natural environment, is the need for awareness of our relationship with nature: the fragility of that relationship, the importance of that relationship, and our necessity to exist within that environment and foster that relationship.”
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