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Over the past year, Andrew Robson and I spent a lot of time talking about small trees. The result is Shohin School, an effort to promote the understanding and appreciation of shohin bonsai.

Let’s wrap up our initial tour of the Expo with some examples of medium and shohin displays.

As promised, Joe Noga’s professional studio photographs.

If seeing great deciduous bonsai at the Pacific Bonsai Expo felt like a treat, seeing the conifers offered a different feeling. It felt like a great opportunity to catch up with trees, and species, that I don’t get to spend a lot of time with.

Back in March, when the submissions started coming in, Eric Schrader and I were thrilled by the quality of the deciduous bonsai.

Steve Zeisel, sponsor of the Winter Silhouette Bonsai Expo did it again, and visitors enjoyed an elegant display of bonsai! Every bonsai was of much better quality than in the first nine expos featuring naked trees. He holds the event to promote bonsai and allows exhibitors to express their beautiful bonsai and creative displays, especially in their winter appearance. 

A few parting images from the exhibition. The attendance was not as previous years, but the bonsai were of a higher quality. This exhibition often includes hanging scrolls, suiseki and other art as accessories as well as grass plantings. The new black color background made the scrolls really stand out, perhaps a bit too much. Most of these professionally produced bonsai exhibitions often consider the owner’s taste. Remember most of these masterpiece bonsai are not cared for by their owners. Professional bonsai artists generally care for their trees, usually at their garden.

In March 2021 The Kyoto Bonsai Garden opened in the middle of the Daitokuji Temple complex. A preopening was held in November-December 2020. The Covid pandemic caused delays and the formal opening was March 20, 2021. Most of the bonsai in the preopening exhibit were from the Tanaka Foundation and other prominent bonsai artists.

Let’s look at two of the more impressive broadleaf evergreens in the Expo, a ficus and a cork oak.

Today the exhibition quietly opened on time, but without a ribbon cutting ceremony, which was cancelled because of Covid. The large crowd of visitors was missing as were foreigners. However, within an hour the exhibition was filled. And the vendor area many foreign customers. I’ve been doing this for several decades and have noticed foreigners head straight to the sales area first, then when they run out of money proceed to look at the trees. By early afternoon there were quite a few foreigners, even Peter Warren from England with his wife and young son Leo.