Know Your Styles: A Guide to Bonsai Configurations

Walking through the Museum, you’ll find plaques with titles, donor names and dates next to most of the bonsai. But do you know how to tell which style our trees are exhibiting?

To help you wow friends on your next visit, Museum curator Michael James walked us through the main styles of bonsai on display in our pavilions: cascade, upright, root-over-rock, forest and windswept. James said these configurations simplify and categorize trees’ common forms or growth habits after enduring forces of nature – like wind, ice and snow – that shape trees in the wild.

“These are just styles that mimic what’s found happening in trees growing in harsh conditions,” he said.

The formal upright style is a simple design: the tree’s apex stands directly over the base of the trunk, and the tree is perfectly straight. James said the informal upright design is a bit looser and more whimsical than formal upright. The tree’s apex remains in line with the base of the tree, but the trunk twists and turns on its way to the top.

An informal upright bonsai.

Forest style displays are created to mirror the different heights and trunk thicknesses found in natural forests, so the trees should differ randomly in size, James said. He added that the displays are usually arranged in odd numbers, ranging from about five to 11 trees.

A forest bonsai display.

Seeds that land on a small patch of fertile soil germinate and send roots down into the earth to create a tree. But over the years that bit of soil can erode, exposing the rock underneath where the tree began to grow. This process creates the root-over-rock look.

A root-over-rock style bonsai.

To replicate this style, bonsai masters will plant a bonsai on top of a rock. In some plantings, the masters attach the bonsai to the rock with wires and the tree lives entirely on the rock, growing in a special soil mix.

In other cases, as the above picture demonstrates, the rock and attached tree are planted in a container filled with soil, and the bonsai roots grow into the soil. In this instance, each time the bonsai is repotted, the master may lift the rock and attached tree higher in the container and remove some of the soil, exposing more of the roots and the rock.

A full-cascade bonsai.

Bonsai in the cascade style also come in two configurations. In the semi-cascade design, the trunk of the tree might lean over and drop below the lip of its pot. But the tip of bonsai in full-cascade reaches below its container, to emulate a tree clinging to a cliffside.

A bonsai in the windswept style.

The Museum has one tree that displays the windswept look: the iconic Chinese elm. Branches of windswept bonsai grow in one direction and look as if the tree is growing while enduring a strong wind blowing from only one side.

James said some styles are more common in certain trees, but many trees can be trained into myriad configurations. One exception is with cascade bonsai. Trees in the cascade category are often flowering trees or conifers, like pines and junipers, which are found in mountainous areas. Their low hanging branches are pulled down by the weight of fruit or snow and ice that accompany high-altitude conditions, creating the cascade look.

He added that some styles fit specific occasions, as certain designs are more formal than others.

“If you were displaying a bonsai for a special occasion you would use a formal tree, which would be very stately, maybe austere – very proper,” James said. “But an informal tree lends itself more to having a party or a big celebration. Something fun, maybe even more playful.”

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Looking to learn even more about bonsai, and get your hands-on experience while doing it? Join our Museum Staff and Volunteers as they offer several Intro to Bonsai classes this July. Learn more here.

HISTORICAL TREE SPOTLIGHT: “Spring Rain” Stone Penjing

When thinking of bonsai or penjing, one naturally imagines perfectly manicured trees. But in this month’s Historical Tree Spotlight, we’re shifting gears and taking a look instead at a unique stone presentation called “Spring Rain.” Museum curator Michael James says the rocky display exemplifies a fundamental difference between bonsai and penjing.

“Penjing, in the literal translation, is more of a theme or a landscape in a shallow container, whereas bonsai is really the minimalist, iconic tree we all know,” he said.

A gift from the Shanghai Botanical Garden to the Museum in 2006, “Spring Rain” is usually on display during the summer months in the Chinese Pavilion.

The penjing sits in a nearly five-foot tray crafted from white marble – a prolific resource used often in Southern China – which is meant to portray the surrounding sea. Its jutting landscape is a representation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site composed of a group of land masses protruding from Halong Bay in the South China sea.

Although “Spring Rain” represents a physical place on Earth, James said penjing are not always crafted to resemble real locations. The displays are often created as a poetic representation of an imaginary world or whimsical place.  

“With some of the other penjing we have in the Museum, the trees are so curvy they don’t even look the way trees naturally grow,” he said. “But they do look like an amazing place to be if you were miniaturized in that setting.”

According to James, the small boats under the main rock signify another capital difference between bonsai and penjing. The tiny pewter or ceramic figurines are accents used in penjing to create a humanistic scale. James said the presence of greenery is minimal in penjing, and the lack of plants in “Spring Rain” speaks to the minimalistic approach of the art.

He added that penjing artists use a freeform “clip-and-grow” method, rather than training the trees with wire, to redirect the trees’ energy into the desired form.

“With penjing, artists and creators allow the tree to do more of what it does naturally,” James said.

The Museum is Alive with the Sound of the National Symphony Orchestra!

(L-R) Janice Vitale (NBF Board Member), Amy Grossnickle (Kennedy Center), NSO Musicians, Johann Klodzen (NBF Executive Director) posed with the Juniperus chinensis var. Itoigawa (donated by the Kennett Collection).

It was a great honor to have the National Symphony Orchestra perform a Chamber Concert at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum on Saturday, June 1st in the Upper Courtyard.

The quartet, made up of National Symphony musicians Hanna Lee and Jing Qiao (violin), Eric deWaardt (viola), and Loewi Lin (cello) treated the crowd of nearly 70 visitors to a range of compositions from Vivaldi to Glass, all inspired by nature and/or Asian culture in someway to match the beautiful setting.

Jack Sustic, NBF Co-President welcomes the crowd.

Jack Sustic, National Bonsai Foundation’s Co-President, was there to welcome and introduce the program. Board Member, Jim Hughes, and Janice Vitale were also there. The free program was a huge success, with many of the visitors asking for more programming like it in the future.

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Read an interview we did with the musicians before the concert here.

We Won Washington City Paper’s “Best Place to Take An Out-Of-Towner” Best of DC Award For Second Year in a Row

We are thrilled to announce that The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum has clinched the “Best Place to Take An Out-of-Towner” award in the 2019 Washington City Paper BEST OF DC Readers’ Poll.

We would like to thank all of the visitors and followers who voted for us in the poll. We are grateful for all of your support throughout the year, and we hope you continue to enjoy our collections, exhibits and events.

We Celebrate World Bonsai Day

Michael Hagedorn leading a presentation during live bonsai demonstrations (Photo courtesy of Michael James)

On May 11th, bonsai enthusiasts and admirers of the art gathered at bonsai centers around the globe to celebrate World Bonsai Day. The celebration pays homage to the vision of the founders of the World Bonsai Friendship Federation who believed  in the power of bonsai to promote friendship and goodwill throughout the world.

Photos courtesy of Olivia Anderson

We spoke with Museum intern Andy Bello about World Bonsai Day at The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum and the huge impact that celebrating the small trees can have.

The Museum recognized World Bonsai Day with Michael Hagedorn, a bonsai expert who traveled from Portland, Oregon to give pruning demonstrations and lectures and sign his book, “Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.”

Photo courtesy of Michael James

According to Bello, visitors filed into the Museum’s auditorium on the morning of the 11th to listen to Hagedorn’s lecture on common bonsai care and technical myths that his soon-to-be-published book “Bonsai Heresy” addresses. For example, Hagedorn untangled the common misconception that one should lay off nitrogen fertilizers in autumn when leaves begin to fall off trees.

Bello said some believe adding nitrogen –  a macronutrient involved in leaf growth – to the soil when trees’ leaves will soon fall off anyway simply wastes resources. But Hagedorn found that, as temperatures begin to drop in the fall, nitrogen fertilizer will not encourage a new flush of foliage unless the weather became unseasonably warm.

“The nitrogen will actually make the tree a little bit healthier throughout the winter season,” Bello said. “When spring comes you already have that nitrogen there, rather than just giving it a big flush of nitrogen right in the spring, there’s a kind of continuous buildup.”

After signing copies of his book, Hagedorn held a demonstration, during which he profiled the technical care and traits of five trees of various species and growth habits. Bello said Hagedorn and Museum volunteers took turns working on the trees in front of about 70 attendees!

“It was just a lot of good information on what to do when spring pests come up or fungal issues come up, especially here in D.C., when the rains start to pick up again and how to take preventative measures for that with different species as well,” Bello said.

He said World Bonsai Day celebrators – consisting of people of all ages and levels of interest in bonsai, including some who had never practiced before – most enjoyed Hagedorn’s demonstration, where they learned answers to questions like, “How are these trees maintained?” and “How are the trees kept so small?”

Michael Hagedorn presenting (Photo courtesy of Michael James)

“People think that the trees just grow this way, but they really take a lot of work to prune back and maintain,” Bello said.

Bello said World Bonsai Day not only provides a forum to appreciate and recognize bonsai, but also promotes the trees to those in the general public who are not as familiar with the ancient art. He added that World Bonsai Day emphasizes the unity of all countries that practice bonsai, especially at the Museum, which has deep connections to Japan.

NBF board member and Vice President, Marybel Balendonck, holds microphone as Michael Hagedorn works on the tree that she donated to the Museum. (Photo courtesy of Michael James)

“Here at the Museum you can walk through and see trees from different parts of Japan, North America and China and see how different cultures taken similar approaches,” Bello said.