Small Wonders

The fascinating Japanese art of bonsai calls for a love of growing tiny plants, some measure of artistic ability and patience aplenty

- Sylvia Mckeown

As far back as 1200 years ago, the Japanese people learnt of the intriguing Chinese practice of penzai, (also known as penjing) in which, through limiting the growth of plants, they were able to imitate nature in miniature form. Japanese horticulturalists would go on to reinterpret the tradition and seamlessly thread it into their own cultural and visual ideals, eventually turning bonsai into the internationally respected art form that it is today.

The word ‘bonsai’ comprises a pair of Japanese characters that translate to ‘plant in a container’ – a tree or shrub cultivated in a pot and made to look like a dwarfed mature version (usually less than 1m in height) through the use of horticultural and aesthetic training techniques. The result is an artistic marriage of visual harmony and botanical wellbeing.

Henk Swanepoel of Bonsai Studio at Johannesburg’s 44 Stanley Avenue in Milpark became fascinated with the diminutive art form when he saw a TV show about it in his teens. It inspired his first bonsai efforts, which involved bloudraat (hard industrial wire), a pair of secateurs and his mother’s rose bush. ‘The rose bush obviously isn’t alive any more,’ he laughs.