Mastering the little things: How bonsai got so big

Curious, I emailed Jonkers. It turns out he had, in fact, been an ardent Karate Kid fan, took up bonsai as a childhood hobby and in 2000, aged 15, created a website to promote his passion. Today, Bonsai Empire is produced in 15 languages and clocks up millions of visitors a year. Jonkers recently launched an app to help the Empire’s global community track the wellbeing of their plants.

“COVID definitely created an uptick in interest,” says Jonkers. “A longer-term trend is people’s busy lives and the need to unwind, to focus on creating something beautiful.”

Hugh Grant’s garden is a place of enormous beauty, although it’s not decorative in a conventional sense. It’s a “nursery” in the most literal way: a place where he nurtures and shapes living beings – some not so young – that will one day be sent out into the world. Like all bonsai artisans, a large part of Grant’s job is the ongoing care of plants he has sold.

“There are hobbyists who want to hone their craft and we happily cater to them by offering classes,” says Grant. “But there are other clients who appreciate bonsai and want to have them at home or in the office, but aren’t so interested in their upkeep, which must be constant. It’s like owning a car; not everyone who owns a car is a mechanic.” Grant is adept at tinkering beneath your bonsai’s bonnet.

While studying sculpture and photography at the University of Newcastle, Grant discovered the work of iconoclastic American bonsai master Ryan Neil, who had in turn apprenticed to the so-called “magician of bonsai” Masahiko Kimura, in the small neighbourhood of Omiya, about 50 kilometres north-west of Tokyo. Neil, like his master, was using radical new techniques – tiny chainsaws, fineglass blasters – to create bonsai forms that had not been seen before.

“He was creating designs that were evocative of emotions other than quiet and contemplation,” says Grant. “He added a Western perspective to an Eastern tradition, and I found that compelling.”

Omiya in late winter is pewter-skied and far from picturesque. Cherry trees are still spindly, but their nascent buds are rotund and about to burst with pollen (a hardy supply of antihistamines is advised). I have an interview with Hiromi Hamano, now in his 80s and the son of Kimura’s bonsai master, Motosuke Hamano. Hamano took over his father’s Toju-en Bonsai Garden and has sent 50 apprentices out into the world. Jonkers and Grant both refer to him as “very significant” (itself a kind of haiku).

I’m struck by the non-demonstrative aspect of the garden. Like Grant’s, this is a place of quiet and care, not of ostentation. Hamano-sensei (“master” in deference to his venerability and influence) is dressed in single-pleated polyester pants, leather-belted and topped with a neat striped shirt. The plants, hundreds of them perched upon waist-high, weatherbeaten planks, boast vibrant green foliage, artfully mixing dead (in fact, murdered) white trunks with live brown ones, the two intertwining to dramatic effect.

These often have names evoking dragons, clouds, honour and time. One tree is more than 600 years old. I bow to it and move on.

“It’s like Zen Buddhism,” says Hamano, “it’s not about money. It’s about deep focus, about challenging the self to think and act for the love of bonsai.”

Over to one side, an apprentice is constraining the trunk of a tiny pine with copper wire, lopping off unwanted branches, gently clipping aromatic needles. (I learn that black pine has clusters of two leaves, white pine five – but am no less baffled by the level of concentration it takes to ‘style’ this minutiae.)

“An apprentice works for five years, studying the master,” Hamano explains, “then a year working closely with the master, learning the mental aspect of bonsai.”

Back in the Blue Mountains, minus the zen philosophy, Grant agrees that this level of concentration is de rigueur.

“I spend a lot of time studying the tree, considering the way it wants to grow, then shaping and amplifying that, in miniature,” he says. “It’s not so much about constraining the tree as it is about working with it to optimise its potential. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean its impact can’t be enormous.”