There's No Failure in Bonsai Unless You Kill a Tree – and Don't Get Another One
Bonsai Instructor Russ Stevens Talks Patience and Impermanence
In 2022, prompted by, well, I don’t know what, I decided to look into getting a bonsai tree. I knew nothing about them, but something in the deep recesses of my mind urged me on. A few years before, my yoga instructor, Laurie LeCompte, had given me an air plant as a holiday gift. So I asked Laurie if she knew where I could find a bonsai.
“There’s one guy in town. I only know him as the Bonsai Guy. If you Google ‘Bonsai guy Louisville,’ he should turn up,” she said.
Sure enough, that search yielded Russ Stevens of Twisted Nature Bonsai. I reached out and set up a class. Russ spent two hours with me, teaching me the (very) basics of bonsai, soil, watering and fertilizer. I bought a small Brazilian Rain Tree. I was hooked.
I visit Russ’s nursery often, for education, fun and to give my bonsai some TLC at the “spa” as Russ calls it. Louisville boasts some truly wonderful outdoor spaces and gorgeous nature walks. Walking in Russ’s nursery remains one of my very favorite nature walks, in Louisville or anywhere. I visit as often as I can. His nursery and our conversations always inspire me.
Russ kindly sat down with me to share some of his trees, artistry and wisdom. You will love it!
AND, if you live anywhere near Louisville, come check out Bonsai Weekend at Waterfront Botanical Gardens, August 23-25, 2024. Last year’s show was unbelievable! My daughter Beatrice and I loved every tree. This year’s Bonsai Weekend is shaping up to be simply unforgettable!
Let's start with the basics: what is bonsai?
Bonsai simply means a tree grown in a pot. We use Ligneous wood, which is wood that actually grows on itself year after year, and specialty soil to be able to grow in a smaller container.
How'd you get into trees? You're an arborist – have you always been interested in trees and nature?
Actually it came later in life. I graduated with an IT degree from UK [the University of Kentucky]. I didn't want to do help desk work or work in an office. I had a number of lawn and landscaping clients and I decided to pursue that. I got a truck and equipment and started doing it full-time. That led to me gaining an interest in trees, Japanese maples specifically.
My mom's name is Rose. My grandmother always had a rose garden, so that was my first start. But, I don't like roses because they're thorny. They're beautiful. A lot of the good varieties are very fragrant, but they're a lot of work. I worked in my grandma's garden and we had some roses at home. My father's a surgeon, so I needed to do something besides be a lawn guy. That's when I started to specialize in trees. There's a horticultural consultant in town, and we did classes at Cave Hill Cemetery, which is a National Arboretum Cemetery. Some of the most beautiful trees around. This was back in 2010 or 2011, and we still had lots of the big trees. We've since had big storms that have taken some of the massive ones down. I got in with her and learned about tree identification through all the seasons.
Then I started doing a lot more tree plantings. I hired someone from Bob Ray. He performed most of their plant healthcare treatments, which would be deep root feeding, root collar excavation, and soil amendments, for example. He taught me about that stuff, which is pretty much the most technologically advanced thing you can do for a tree in the ground. That's when I switched over from cutting up trees to planting and growing them.
When I became interested in trees, I got a small bonsai, in Indianapolis at the White River Gardens. The local club had little vendors there. I got a little shimpaku juniper. The next year I took my first workshop, with Ryan Neil, my original teacher, from St. Helens, Oregon, and one of the world's most renowned bonsai professionals these days. It was with Ryan, but it was at Bjorn Bjorholm’s house with Owen Reich and Shannon Salyer, and other big names in bonsai today. It was kind of neat to be at his first workshop That was my first workshop with a professional and it was eye-opening, mind-blowing.
So, you buy one bonsai in Indianapolis, and then you go study with this famous teacher. Why did you decide to do that?
Well, there was an open spot in the workshop. So, I took it. I don't read a lot of books or magazines for education. I really like to practice with people that are currently performing these services. Ryan had just come back from Japan, where bonsai is most popular. He had plenty of good knowledge. The difference with him versus previous professionals who had traveled to Japan is that Ryan was sharing all of his knowledge. He wasn't holding it back. He had been to Europe, Africa, Canada, and other areas that had less strict importation laws. And they had much better trees all across the board. And he’s trying to elevate bonsai in the United States. In fact, he is still one of the top proponents for bonsai educational out there. Super good guy, super intentional. I studied with him consistently for three years, and I went to at least one workshop a year with him, for seven or eight years.
I was kind of a groupie and followed him around whenever he was within driving distance.
What does studying bonsai mean?
There's no college for bonsai. Lots of these teachers offer intensive courses. Bjorn’s class was three years. Ryan’s class was also three years. We would do 12 work days with them each year. I would spend three to four days at a time with them, practicing, learning new techniques. And I’d do that three years in a row. We’d come at different times to work in different seasons.
I completed Ryan’s program on junipers. It was a huge commitment. It was out in Portland. Luckily, I had a best friend who lived out there, so I stayed with him and drove to his Mirai nursery.
Bjorn had a very similar program. We got a certificate at the end, which doesn't necessarily mean much. In Japan, they've got the NBA, the Nippon Bonsai Association. It’s a certifying body that will make you a legit bonsai professional. And a number of Americans have achieved that certification.
Tell me about the difference between caring for big trees, and caring for small trees, for bonsai. I don't mean things like tools and soil. I mean the approach you take, your mindset and goals.
Whenever I work on a tree, I'm going for ultimate health. I want to help it get back to where it was. That's the number one goal. How aggressive I am in my treatment program will vary. When I'm working on a big tree, most of our problems are with roots or soil. So sometimes you'll be able to see the root issues, but if you see a fairly good root flare, trunk flare, then it's a soil issue. Meaning: whether the soil is too wet, too compacted, or doesn’t contain enough oxygen. There's an easy way to remediate that: by blowing that soil away and backfilling it with lighter, airier soil.
With bonsai, it's a direct correlation. Bonsai are super-pampered and well-cared-for. They get watered way more than yard trees and receive way more fertilizer. If there's a problem up top, then there's a problem in the soil. You can address that immediately with a bonsai. You can take it out of the pot, cut out the exact area of rot. Or you can take out that impervious area where water can’t get to, and then replace it with fresh soil. And the tree will continue to grow just fine. With bonsai, you can make that immediate resolution.
Part of bonsai is wanting to make bonsai look like big trees, like you’d see at Cave Hill Cemetery or in a National Park. If you see a big Western Red Cedar, you can recreate that into bonsai form. We want to provide the same look as a tree on a smaller scale.
The pictures in the American Bonsai Society magazine are amazing. Trees are hanging way down and they're coming out of interesting-shaped pots or partial pots or even old shards. Do bonsai artists see that as a challenge? To grow a tree successfully around a particular rock or around a particular pot?
We experiment and that’s what we do. Some people will try an air layer. Or you try to grow a root over a rock. They usually aren’t too difficult. But that’s what we do as bonsai artists.
What's an air layer?
An air layer is where you put roots into a bag and then cut that off and you'll have a new tree with those roots. You are trying to get a free tree.
There's ground layering too, where you can lay them on the ground and put mulch on it.
Early on in bonsai, you're trying to do lots of different things to maximize your experiments. When I started in bonsai, I was much more experimental than I am now because now I know what works and I try to stick with that.
Most people just struggle to get off the starting blocks and grow a tree. With my students, I focus on helping them learn about plants in general because if you don't have a lot of experience with them, then they can be pretty difficult.
How are you pushing your own knowledge of bonsai? Are you still taking seminars with Bjorn or Ryan or anybody?
After studying with these professionals for so long, I do have an increased sense of confidence and the abilities to make these trees what I want. Yes, I'm always studying. Yes, I'm always going to seminars. Bjorn, unfortunately, just moved to Japan. He had lived in Nashville, only three hours away. It was a godsend to the southeast. My last class with him was in March.
Is he ever coming back to the United States?
No. He'll come back to judge shows and stuff like that, but he’s not coming back to live here.
We also have teachers that come in for the Greater Louisville Bonsai Society. We recently hosted a Kusamono workshop with Young Choe. She was terrific and we had a great turnout for her.
Was that awesome?
Dude, it was sick. It was amazing. Far, far better than I could have ever anticipated.
That's awesome.
That's what we're going for. Sometimes we'll have a general teacher who’s good with everything. But we’ll have teachers with a specific focus, like Young Choe on Kusamono. We'll go to one or two other nurseries a year as a club too. Sometimes they'll put on a demonstration. The club also has our annual show at the Waterfront Botanical Gardens.
Which was amazing last year. My daughter and I loved it.
It's going to be even better this year. We've got a semi-pro from Chicago coming down. And he's going to do lots of workshops and all kinds of other good stuff. There are great learning opportunities.
There's the Pacific Bonsai Expo in California in November this year. I'm going to try to make it out there. I showed a couple trees in St. Louis in May. When I walk through the exhibition hall, I want to see what people are really stopping at. What draws the eye. I am kind of doing market research. I'm not a trained artist. I can't draw a stick figure. This was my first foray into any kind of art. The artistic component of bonsai is still new to me. I was lucky because of my horticultural background. I knew how to grow plants and I was able to grow plants. Art is the other 50%. And I'm only 20% into my 50% learning about my art. It's still constant development. Whenever there is an artist around, I want to learn from that person.
How do you think about yourself? Are you an arborist? Are you a horticulturist? Are you an artist? Are you a teacher? How do you view yourself in your work?
I've thought about this before. I don't really have a title for myself. I'm definitely a horticulturist and I'm an arborist. With bonsai, I'm a root specialist. In my focus, I can develop a root ball and get the tree off to a very good start. Unfortunately, everybody looks at the canopy, so they don't necessarily understand the benefits of a high-quality root ball. I'm a horticulturist and arborist. Even more so, a plant health care arborist. Whenever you say arborist, people think he's running around with a chainsaw, cutting trees down. Yes, sometimes we have to do that, but I don't do that anymore.
In one of our meetings, you mentioned spending 8 to 12 hours one day working on a single tree. I find that so fascinating. Our culture thinks about spending five minutes on this, responding to an email, responding to a text, figuring out kid-logistics with the wife, then going back to the original thing for five more minutes. Keep moving….move, move, move, move. The idea of focusing on one thing in front of you – with no technology around except single use technology, such as your scissors – seems so alien to our culture today. Talk to me about bonsai and focus and attention and being willing to dedicate a lot of time and attention to something for its care.
That's an intense question. I'm just trying to figure out how to start that off. So, there's a lot of family neglect to get tree work done. I'm a glutton for pain as far as the extensiveness of my collection.
What drives me to it is that we're predominantly an agrarian society. Everybody has gotten a great deal out of growing things. I love when somebody says, “I've got a black thumb, I can't grow anything.” And I tell them, “you have bad information and I can help you grow things.” When I'm educating people, that makes me feel good. If I am going to sell someone a little red pine, I've got to develop one myself to show them what it can be and help guide them in that process. Unless you spend time in Japan, when you walk back in my nursery, you don't know what you're looking at. Yes, you know, there are bonsai of some type, but you've never seen the diversity. You've never seen the styles.
Every time I come here, I feel like I'm starting over in my education. I'm so, so, so new, even after two years.
That’s part of it. You are always learning, always developing. When I'm walking around, I'm figuring things out. It is hard to stay focused on this stuff. In the rainy spring, cold days that are gray and wet, my bones are achy. I wish I were in Florida. But, I really want to work on trees.
That powers me through in the summertime because there's so much work going on right now. It's the growing season. Like I said, I'm a glutton for pain. So, instead of just having deciduous trees or coniferous trees or tropical trees or houseplants or succulents or cacti, I have all of them together. If I eliminated certain categories of those plants, I would eliminate certain work periods throughout the year.
But I know that I'm just the holdover person for this plant. I'm going to die someday, hopefully not anytime soon. I'm going to do my damnedest to keep these trees alive and make them the best that they can be for when someone comes in and buys them and wants it as their next project. I’m trying to make sure that I can create a good root ball, create a nice trunk, and create an attractive foliage bed to make the tree attractive to somebody.
Oh, man, I'm loving this. This is awesome. Let me ask you about failure. When a bonsai artist fails, what's happened?
Bonsai is the most misunderstood art, or the least discussed art, versus any kind of traditional art, like music and or painting. Bonsai is the least talked about. There's no such thing as failing in bonsai unless you kill a tree – and then don't get another one. You only fail when you stop trying.
We have failures throughout our process. That's why I grow such a massive collection of trees, because if I lose one or two, that's not that big of a deal. If I lose a couple of smaller trees in between years 1 and 5, that's just part of it. There's definitely failures along the way –insect infestation, fungal infestations.
But there's no failing in bonsai as much as there is stopping the practice.
Does failure teach new lessons? Or in bonsai do you always fail for certain, specific reasons?
There are 6 options. That's it. Not enough sunlight, too much sunlight. Not enough water, too much water. Not enough fertilizer, too much fertilizer. It’s one of those reasons or a combination.
In terms of teaching and failure, my teaching has hopefully improved over the years as well. I've been doing this hardcore since COVID, when we had a huge boom. Everybody was staying at home and this was the perfect hobby: grow a tree at home. Luckily I've been able to retain a lot of those customers. I've been doing classes and I’ve refined my teaching process.
You mentioned you're an experiential learner. So am I, in part. I'm also a book learner. Are there good bonsai books?
The Little Book of Bonsai, by Jonas Dupuich. Jonas is a really good guy. He's got a nice blog, Bonsai Tonight. I would check that out.
Most of the books on bonsai came out in the late 70s, early 80s, 90s, and they simply don't have any relevance anymore because we use different materials. We can get the information so much faster via YouTube. Watching Ryan Neil videos or Bjorn Bjorholm videos, you can get the proper information immediately and then dive into it. Bonsai Empire is also very nice. They all have great, great material. They haven't written a lot of books.
If you're into quirky books, Mike Hagedorn has written a couple of books: Bonsai Heresy and Post-Dated. The second one is about being an apprentice in Japan. He's got a different writing style. It's pretty interesting.
But, yeah, so those would be good books that are relevant today. And then, things that are still relevant would be the Kokufu Exhibition Book or the Taiken-ten show books, from 1980. Any of them are great.
What do you find most rewarding about working with bonsai? I'm not necessarily looking for a deep or profound answer. It can be anything.
I'm trying to be deep.
It can be anything.
I like something that I've created, that I've spent my time on. I like hearing when people walk into the backyard and say, “Wow!” And, not only regular people, but experienced bonsai professionals and practitioners. I like that pat on the back.
But, my biggest reward is—when somebody comes back. They've been here before. They come back, they bring their tree, and it's doing well. I was looking for that kind of education when I started, so that’s the kind of education I provide.
I've been keeping plants in quantity since at least 2013. This nursery has matured greatly over the last few years. It’s matured to a point where there's not a lot in the area like it. You would have to drive a number of hours to have the selection, the quality of trees, and the number of pots available in one place. Previously there wasn't a whole lot around here for bonsai and bonsai education. That's why I exist.
I wish that I had a shop. It's something that I'd like to potentially do in the future, but these trees require constant care. Being able to live on-site with them is the best thing possible. Most other high-quality bonsai nurseries, which I would consider mine to be, they're all live-in as well.
Let me ask what may be some woo-woo questions. I love going outside to my bonsai tree and saying, “Good morning, bonsai.” That may sound so dumb, but I love doing it. And I'm just curious: does doing bonsai bring you peace? Do you think the trees feel you or your energy? Do they respond? Do they sense your presence and your emotions?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I don't come out and ask them how they're doing or anything. I just look at them. I just look at them, and they tell me what's going on.
As far as relationships, I definitely have grown more fond of certain trees over the number of years of caring for them, seeing them develop, bringing them back from near death or evolving them from a shaggy bush into a beautiful design.
It's kind of weird. This is still only a hobby business. I still do this only about 40% of the time. Once it became more of a business, trees are with me, and I can touch them, feel them, all that. If they decide to leave, that's on them. So, I don't get too attached to them. I try to provide the tree with my best care. If you're a tree that's performing for me, I'm going to perform for you. If a tree dies, I'm not that upset about it initially. Obviously, I like to keep my nice trees around. But, I don't like to get that close to them. I've got a few trees that I'm close to, yes. But not as many as you might think.
What has bonsai taught you about life, or how has it changed your life? Or maybe another way to think about the question is, what do you know about life because of bonsai that my readers who do not do bonsai, may not know, or may not consider?
Kind of touching on what I just mentioned, impermanence. It's taught me quite a bit of patience. With bonsai, you can't really get what you want in one season, two seasons, even three seasons. So, having the perseverance to stick with it and to make sure that these trees are going to get to where you want them to – it takes a lot.
That's awesome. The perseverance, impermanence.
This is one of the closest connections that we can have to plants. With farmers, they might be close to their fields, plant their annual crops, but then the crops are gone by the next season. But, I've been caring for some trees for over a decade now. Yes, there is a bond that forms. And it's nice knowing that if I do well and I teach somebody else to do well, then these trees will live longer than both of us, than everybody currently alive.
That's wonderful. Last question: If someone’s reading this and gets inspired, how can they get involved in bonsai? If you are anywhere near Louisville, you should reach out to Russ. But if you’re not near Louisville, what should you do?
I would go to Google and check out highly rated bonsai nurseries in your area. You could also contact your local bonsai club. There's usually a bonsai club within 50 miles of most big cities, if not multiple clubs. You could also look at the American Bonsai Society directory, and that directory has lists of nurseries in your area.
What I'm hearing is: don't go to some random place, buy a tree and start winging it. No, do it right. Invest in some education, invest in a class, invest in teaching yourself how to keep it alive.
My mantra is: if you're not going to do something right, why do it at all? These people in the nurseries and clubs have been growing in your area for an extended amount of time. They've probably had the same aspirations and the same experimental aspirations to try to learn this stuff, so they can help you out in your journey. Yes, you might pay some money, but you're going to learn a whole lot more.
If there’s no club nearby, they can use Bonsai Mirai Live, and that's a subscription service. Or Bonsai-U, also a subscription service. There's also plenty of free YouTube content from both of them. If you don't have anybody close, then those are definitely the best places to go.
Yeah, they’re awesome.
Don't watch The Karate Kid. If that's where you were thinking of going for bonsai advice.
Don't watch The Karate Kid. Maybe that'll be the title of the newsletter article. “Don't watch The Karate Kid to Learn About Bonsai.”
I'm not bashing it at all. I don’t want that.
Well, Russ, this has been such an enjoyable conversation. I have loved every minute of it. Thank you!
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I really enjoyed this dive into Bonsai! I'm less familiar with them and their genealogy, and curious how/why they remain so tiny without their roots bursting through the pots?
Bonsai are so mystical... you expect petite fairies, frogs and princes to be living in their branches.