I Attempted Bonsai During COVID. It Taught Me One Surprising Thing.
In the end, it was about more than trees
In year two of COVID, I attempted bonsai.
And by attempted, I mean that I mail-ordered a tiny azalea and a cypress and enjoyed them for eight months until they slowly died. One from aphids, the other of thirst.
I wasn’t alone: bonsai was one of many things people used to fill the negative space of lockdown. Baking tops most lists of pandemic hobbies, but I’d been on that train since 2018, after a Netflix binge of The Great British Baking Show. I still bake, and still binge the show sometimes — like Rebecca’s mother Deborah, in “Ted Lasso,” once I love something I love it forever.
And while I enjoyed being greeted by the two bonsai on the back porch — especially the azalea when it bloomed for weeks that summer — in the end, bonsai wasn’t for me.
But I did love what I learned.
It had nothing to do with trees
As an eighties kid whose early movies included Mr. Miyagi and his bonsai, it was probably inevitable I’d try it one day.
It might have worked out if I came from plant people, but I don’t. My mom spent half my formative years ignoring a money tree until the winter it died of frost, when we left it outside on the wrong night. And as a parent now, I get it — it’s hard to care for things with only occasional needs. Things on slower timelines get forgotten or put off.
I’d like to tell you what I learned from my brief attempt at bonsai had to do with growing things. To tell you I learned about trees, soils, fertilizers, pruning.
But it had nothing to do with all that.
Shared passion is magic
One of the best places to learn anything these days is Youtube.
Bonsai is no exception — you can find tutorial on everything from the basics to beautiful, twisted trees generations old. After my plants arrived I went to Youtube, and quickly found Heron’s Bonsai, a nursery in the UK run by Peter Chan. You won’t find anyone on Youtube more charming to watch, on the topic of bonsai. Maybe on any topic.
It was watching him pot maples one day that inspired me. You wouldn’t think watching someone scoop soil from a big tray and plonk little trees into it would be inspiring at all. And yet. There’s magic in someone sharing what they love, what moves them. It makes us feel that the same could be possible for us.
And that was the magic of my brief bonsai journey.
In the end, it was nothing to do with maples, or soil, or bonsai at all — it was the realization, watching someone share an enduring love, that we, too, could be someone like that. We could be someone who inspires. It’s not so hard to do.
There aren’t enough things in the world that tell us that. I wrote this poem to express it, as a reminder to myself — and maybe to you, too.
“Plonk”
(originally published in Nimrod International Journal, 2022)
— For Peter Chan, at Herons Bonsai —
Watching bonsai clips on YouTube,
what stood out was not the bonsai.
Not the refinement of the brooms
and uprights, not the maples
or wisteria, the larch, the junipers,
the crowns of azaleas just coming
into buds. Not the seedlings finding sun
that spring, between the nursery’s pavers
and pea gravel. Instead it was this: plonk.
As he shared how to pot small maples
he drew in the camera, and filled
a pot half full of medium and said now
you just take
the little seedling, and plonk
it in there.
In went the tree, slightly
askew. No pomp. In
went another two
with the rustling of his hands
in the soil, his narration so distinct
with an accent here British
and there Chinese, his passion trees
with names like Hinoki and Deshojo —
the kinds of words one savors, as though
the seventh sense were mouthfeel.
And then this plonk to draw it all down
from altitude, as though to remind
that you too could do this — you
could plonk. That even your
small acts could take root
and branch out
into forms in which anyone
might one day see grace.
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