NO these bonsai are not packed for sale! That’s winter protection for valuable bonsai masterpieces  at Mr. Takeyama’s Fuyo-en bonsai garden.  More later

Today Diane, Corin, Lee and I spent a COLD day with our friend Megumi Kadokura, who lives in Omiya. Her grandfather was a prominent bonsai artist. Unfortunately the garden does not exist now but, I feel fortunate to have met in in 1970.

It has been unusually COLD here in Japan. Yesterday was 24-33oF with wind. At home, in Rochester, New York, it is now -1oF and is still getting colder with over 100 inches, and it not over until May.

Throughout the bonsai village many trees have been moved for a bit of protection, much more than I’ve seen in the past 56 years.

We first visited Toju-en Bonsai Garden of Hirota Katana, the new owner. This young 26 year old man now runs the bonsai garden where Masahiko Kimura and Shinji Suzuki studied. The garden was established by Motosuke Hamano in 1934. I saw several unusual container stands. He has an EXCELLENT YouTube channel “Bonsai Q”. After serving us delicious soup he made for lunch, he showed us around and answered every question we had, in English too.

Of course, we stopped by the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum to study their masterpiece bonsai. Like in all the other gardens the trees were dormant and all the foliage on the Juniper bonsai was a lovely “bronze” color most people would consider to be dead. Many plants prepare by changing color to adapt to the cold winter weather. The recent water garden seems to be maturing and is surrounded by bonsai. Photos are now allowed, except the indoor gallery.

Moving on, we made brief stops at Mansei-en (Takahiro Kato) and Seiko-en (Tomio Yamada) bonsai gardens.

Of course, our final visit was to Hiroshi Takeyama’s Fuyo-en Bonsai Garden. He specializes in fine deciduous and unusual species and forest plantings. Throughout the past decades I’ve seen a couple of his bonsai protected with blankets then covered with poly. There were many more this year. He even builds boxes which are covered with blue tarps which can be seen. The roots of plants are NOT as winter-hardy as the trunks and branches. All the bonsai protected were deciduous flowering and fruiting species, like Chinese quince, Flowering quince and a few Zelkova. 

Additionally, Mr. Takeyama carefully removes a ring of soil on many of his pot bound bonsai in autumn. Then he fills the ditch with fresh soil. Yes, many of the circling roots were trimmed. He does this for two reasons, as the soil freezes in winter it expands and often breaks valuable antique containers. These bonsai will be repotted in spring so trimming the roots is fine. Also, they are easier to accept water. His best deciduous trees and those in shallow containers are kept  in an unheated poly house.

He showed us a new double flowering winter flowering cherry. I’ve seen a great number of Winter flowering cherry, Prunus campanula, especially at winter exhibitions, but they were light pink with larger blossoms. He mentioned that it came from Taiwan. I thought Taiwan was a warm sub-tropical country.