One of the original Conservatory buildings constructed by founder Pierre S. du Pont in 1921, the Potting Shed has been a hub for gardens operations for the last century. Adjacent to the new Bonsai Courtyard, this three-story building houses horticulture staff workspaces, boiler operations, and, now, our Bonsai Workshop. Today, our Bonsai Workshop operates as a hub for preparing and refining our collection of nearly 200 bonsai trees and housing our collection of more than 500 artisanal pots. Here, our experts, visiting artists, and volunteers use a variety of tools to employ a variety of techniques—such as repotting, pruning, and wiring—to guide new growth and share the beauty of bonsai with you. Follow along we take a behind-the-scenes look at this storied space and its integral role at Longwood.
The Bonsai Workshop is as meticulously maintained as our bonsai themselves. Inside, display shelves are adorned by our vast collection of artisanal pots, ranging from Chinese antiques, to pots fired in historic Japanese kilns, to contemporary creations from artists around the world. Central to the essence of bonsai is the interplay between a tree and container or pot—the word bonsai quite literally translates to “tree in pot”. A container should complement and enhance the tree, but never detract from the tree’s beauty—the container should contribute to the character of the composition. Many of the antique pots are highly decorative and have been adapted over time from their original use as a flower pot to a bonsai container.
A portion of our bonsai pot collection, including Cantonese, antique Japanese, and antique Chinese pots. Photo by Carol Gross.
We are fortunate to have a large variety of pots in our collection, giving our bonsai experts more choices when selecting pots to coordinate with a given bonsai tree’s style, and allowing them to find the right pot for the right tree. Our experts examine a pot’s shape, color, depth, and horticultural support—and how each element would complement a given tree—when making their choice. When potting a Rocky Mountain Juniper, for example, it’s not always appropriate to use an antique Asian pot. Ideally, using an American pot can better help tell that tree’s story.
A close look at one of our pots and its unique blue glaze. Photo by Carol Gross.
Spanning a large portion of the Bonsai Workshop’s eastern wall is a beautiful display of bonsai tools, carefully curated and kept. Our collection of bonsai tools is in good company here, as inside the Bonsai Workshop is where our active bonsai training occurs. Here, our experts train the trees in their idealized form to express the age and beauty of trees found in nature.
A look inside our Bonsai Workshop, with a selection of bonsai objects including a foo dog, antique Chinese pot, and wire bonsai made by Longwood Outdoor Landscape Manager Roger Davis. Photo by Carol Gross.
Bonsai trees are always in training; these full-size plants are deliberately kept small through the use of small pots to control growth and through selective pruning to keep the tree happy in its container. As such, bonsai require precise, ongoing evaluation to maintain their shape, structure, and health. Many tools and techniques, as well as hands, come into play. Many of our bonsai trees are more than 100 years old and they have been trained by many experts along the way.
Among our collection of bonsai tools you’ll find a variety of wire that supports branches and trains their direction of growth. Among our wire selections are 16 different thickness-sizes of aluminum wire; our experts select what thickness to use depending on the thickness of the branch that’s being bent. Softer than copper wire and easier to apply, aluminum wire is typically used for deciduous species or trees with fragile bark, and can stay on a tree for up to a couple years. We typically use a brown anodized aluminum, as its surface coating blends in well with the tree. We also house roughly 20 different sizes of copper wire, which affords more holding power than aluminum wire. Copper also patinas nicely over time, blending in particularly well with conifers. Among other tools is raffia, which can be used when pursuing very heavy branch bends. Our experts apply raffia around the are where the bend will occur and extend beyond that area, applying compression to the area of the tree while keeping bark intact and allowing the bend to distribute evenly—this helps apply equal force in the area that’s being bent and reduces risk of cracking.
A variety of wiring awaits in the Bonsai Workshop. Photo by Becca Mathias.
In addition to our dozens of wire selections, our Bonsai Workshop houses a number of hand tools that must be used precisely and delicately. Those tools include a handful of different wirecutters made for removing wire from bonsai. Our experts use different wirecutters depending on whether they’re cutting thinner or thicker wire; thinner wirecutters can get into the detail of the branches when removing wire.
We use different wirecutters depending on the thickness of the wire being cut. The copper wire shown here has been specially made for bonsai to allow it to be easily applied to branches. Photo by Carol Gross.
Our experts also use pliers, which come in various sizes with different shaped tips, for techniques like tightening wire, twisting wire around a rootball when repotting a bonsai in a different container, or even when creating deadwood—or creating, shaping, and preserving dead wood on a living bonsai tree.
Shown here is a selection of our pruning tools, including concave cutters, branch splitters, and chisels. Each has a special use in forming the final bonsai, from creating deadwood to removing large branches. Photo by Carol Gross.
Our bonsai team also uses various blocks and wedges to help style and reangle trees. Photo by Carol Gross.
In addition to scissors we also use a variety of larger pruning shears to shape our trees and then further refine the branches with small scissors. Photo by Carol Gross.
The Bonsai Workshop is typically a staff-only space, dedicated to giving our bonsai team the space and materials needed to care for our bonsai collection and ready our trees for display. Steps from our behind-the-scenes Bonsai Workshop, our 12,500-square-foot Bonsai Courtyard showcases the magnificence of their work, and the work of those who came before them. Each season in the Bonsai Courtyard brings new discoveries and new beauty—as well as a showcase of the constant, meticulous care behind this world-class collection.
