By Matthew Nash
Olympic Peninsula News Group
SEQUIM — It takes patience and determination to keep a bonsai tree going, and members of the Dungeness Bonsai Society try to keep the same amount of care for their annual show, which runs for the 41st time this weekend.
More than 50 bonsai trees, ranging from 1 year old to 250 years old, and all shapes and sizes will be on display for free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Sequim Pioneer Park, 387 E. Washington St.
The trees on display are “ever-evolving,” said Dungeness Bonsai Society President Ron Quigley.
“[Bonsai] is an art form at the highest level,” said club member Clint Cummins. “It’s art and horticulture together with roots from China.”
Bonsai enthusiasts, Cummins said, confine a tree in a small pot and learn to manipulate the tree into various shapes and sizes while giving an impression of great age.
“The best bonsai are rigorous growers but don’t seem to change much because of pruning,” Quigley said.
Both men got started in the hobby coincidentally in 1970 in different locations, and they have dozens of trees at their homes, they said. But how many is a guess, Cummins said, because enthusiasts always are adding some or losing some due to circumstances out of their control such as the weather.
Quigley said he finds the experience of finding the perfect shape cathartic.
“I enjoy the challenge of getting a tree and trying to make something out of it,” he said.
“If you take care of it, it’ll go for hundreds of years.”
Cummins said in other countries, such as in Japan, bonsai trees are handed down from generation to generation.
Quigley said being busy with a young family and a career kept him out of the bonsai world, but he revisited it in the mid-1980s and finds even today it helps him “forget about what’s going on in the world.”
Becoming a bonsai enthusiast is not out of reach, club members say.
Cummins said many people go to local nurseries looking for “trees with character” if they can’t travel out of the area.
However, it’s harder to find bonsai-ready trees, he said, because suppliers continue to take better care of their stock and suppliers only sell “perfect stuff.”
Whether a tree is from the wild or a store, the club’s past president Jerry Tomeo will give a demonstration at 1 p.m. Saturday at the show about how to make a bonsai from any tree. The completed tree will be raffled later that day.
Club members say bonsai trees are typically oak, pine and juniper, but often collectors need to travel out of the area with collector’s permits to find coveted trees in the wild, called yamadori.
For beginners, Cummins said junipers are best because they are hardy and hold up well in the Pacific Northwest.
Most local bonsai enthusiasts grow and articulate trees 15 to 20 inches tall, Cummins said, because most of the club is older and smaller trees are easier to handle.
In the months to come, Quigley said, he’s looking to take on his biggest bonsai challenge yet by transforming a 15-foot giant sequoia in his front yard into a bonsai.
He received the tree in 2009 from a fellow club member and planted one of its branches with the intent to grow its trunk larger. Quigley said he will cut the tree back significantly along with its roots and grow the remaining tree in pumice.
While that might seem daunting, the society’s show features bonsais of all levels.
The Dungeness Bonsai Society hosts 30 active members and meets the first Tuesday of each month from 10 a.m. to noon in Pioneer Memorial Park except in December and January.
For more information, visit dungenessbonsai.wordpress.com.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
One of Ron Quigley’s many bonsai trees includes a “Phoenix Graft” in which he chiseled the trunk of a dead rosemary tree and inserted Shimpaku juniper to make them look like live veins.
