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Boon’s garden

August 1, 2014 by Jonas Dupuich

Bay Island Bonsai’s annual barbecue last weekend offered ample opportunity to wander through the marvel that is Boon’s garden. There are trees everywhere representing different sizes, shapes, styles and varieties of bonsai.

Bonsai benches

 Boon’s garden

Bonsai benches

Small and medium-sized bonsai

As Boon’s garden is not open to the public, BIB events and Boon’s Intensives are among the best ways to visit. One tree worth checking out is one of the larger specimens in the garden, a massive Sierra juniper.

Giant sierra juniper

Big juniper

As many of the trees in Boon’s garden are collected, rebar is a common sight. Collected trees often go through significant transformations, and rebar is a useful tool in this transformation.

Rebar

Rebar on a juniper

Accent plants fill many of the gaps between trees, as do a variety of fun non-bonsai-related specimens.

Pitcher plant

Pitcher plants

Pine foliage is never far away.

Pine foliage

Pine foliage

Likewise, trees at every stage of development. Some of these are in their first bonsai containers awaiting initial styling.

Olives

Olives

Other trees are fresh from the field.

Black pines

Black pines

After spending enough time in Boon’s garden, these undeveloped specimens begin to resemble trees we’d like to show. Here’s a black pine that’s about 20 years old after no more than 10 years of training.

Black pine

Black pine

Of course, there are many refined bonsai too.

Red pine

Red pine

Shimpaku saikei

Shimpaku saikei

In all, there are more trees than one can rationally catalogue in a day. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse!

✕

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Filed Under: Excursions Tagged With: Boon Manakitivipart

Previous Post: « Planning a bonsai exhibit
Next Post: Grafting Utah juniper – removing the original foliage »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Efi says

    August 1, 2014 at 5:09 am

    beautiful trees, great bonsai work. well done guys !!
    Efi

  2. Marty Baumann says

    August 1, 2014 at 6:38 am

    Hi Jonas,

    Great post! I have been fortunate to see a few demos by Boon over the years but have never visited his nursery. I noticed the hoses attached to his trees in some of your pictures. Can you describe his watering system?

    Thanks, Marty

    Sent from my iPad

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      August 1, 2014 at 11:51 pm

      Hi Marty – good question. In brief there are two systems at Boon’s house: an automatic irrigation system and hoses for more fine tuned control. The irrigation system consists of sprinkler heads that can cover several trees at once and smaller emitters that can point at single trees. As I don’t know the specifics of the system I’ll leave it at that.

  3. Adair Martin says

    August 1, 2014 at 7:20 am

    Jonas,

    I’ve been going to Boon’s Intensives for two years. Every time I go, I “see” something new that I’ve walked past dozens of times, that enlightens me, inspires me, and encourages me.

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