Highlights from Shinji Suzuki’s garden

It’s inspiring to walk through a beautiful bonsai garden.

Japanese maple

A visit to Shinji Suzuki’s garden is a visit to a lot of really, really, good trees.

Looking up at a Chinese quince

The garden is arranged in a series of greenhouses with courtyards between them. In winter, nearly all bonsai are brought indoors to shelter them from the cold. In one room we found a group of trees bound for Kokufu.

Shimpaku displayed at 90th Kokufu-ten

Shimpaku displayed at 90th Kokufu-ten – one of my favorite trees from the exhibit

One of the main rooms was dominated by one of the more famous trees in Japan – a red pine famously designed by Kimura.

Red pine

Below, you can see what makes the tree remarkable: unbelievable bark.

Outstanding bark

Fans of the dwarf Japanese quince ‘chojubai’ found many great specimens.

Small chojubai

Medium chojubai

Large chojubai

One deciduous tree that caught my attention was a Japanese beech undergoing significant re-tooling after the tree lost several branches in an accident.

Japanese beech

Noticing my interest in the tree, longtime apprentice Yusuke brought out a book showing how the tree used to look.

Beech as it appeared a few decades ago

Walking through the garden, Boon was all smiles.

Boon Manakitivipart

Eric Schrader was all smiles in a room full of white pines.

Eric Schrader

Actually, were were all grinning.

Back row: Eric, Paul, Tyler, Matt, Jonas; front row: Jeff, Boon, Bobby

As we headed through the garden for a final pass before catching the train back to Tokyo, the sun began to cast a golden light in the room. It was a nice send-off.

Shimpaku