Michael Hagedorn working at one of Boon’s intensives. From Bonsai Boon.

A little background
I stumbled across this article (below) by Michael Hagedorn while whiling away some time exploring Bonsai Boon. Michael is now recognized as one of our most accomplished bonsai artists, authors and teachers, and Boon, in addition to being one of Michael’s teachers and a first rate bonsai artist, has long been a key player in establishing and furthering the art of bonsai in North America.

In Michael’s own words
“I first met Boon Manakitivipart some years ago at a bonsai convention. He was energetic and animated, and sported a day-bag slung over one shoulder. I recall telling him I had read some articles he had written, and was watching his rising career with interest. Back then I had no idea this man would eventually change my orientation in bonsai, and become my sensei….” Here for the entire article.

Michael tacking a very short pine with a very thick trunk at Boon’s intensive. Michael is the author of Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.

You could spend your whole life collecting bonsai and never find one as impressive as this. From Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai Seasonals. Here’s what Michael says about this photo… “Initial potting of a large Rocky Mountain Juniper, Winter 2010 Seasonal.” Just a little understated. If this is any indication, it’s worth noting that Michael has his students working on trees of this caliber (and caliper).

Study with one of the very best
My guess is that three days with Michael will be worth months or even years of fumbling about in your backyard in hopes that trial and error will see you through (speaking from painful experience and an embarrassing trail of damaged trees). Not that you shouldn’t fumble around a bit, that’s part of how we learn. But time with a genuinely accomplished bonsai artist and teacher can do wonders for your fumbling, and your bonsai.

Seasonals
“The Crataegus Bonsai Seasonal is designed for those who are not from the Portland area and who would be willing to travel to learn bonsai. This program is similar to how an apprentice learns in Japan: By working on our teacher’s trees, we study at a higher level. Now in its second year, the Seasonal was created out of requests of students from around the country who were interested in coming to Portland to study.” Continued here…

Ram Lukas rewiring a Western juniper during the Fall 2009 Seasonal.

About Michael Hagedorn
“Michael Hagedorn is a bonsai artist who spent 2 1/2 years apprenticing under Shinji Suzuki of Nagano, Japan. Michael’s art background ranges from painting and drawing to ceramic sculpture and installation.” Continued here…

Michael’s book
Post-Dated, The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk, is about Michael’s time studying in Japan with Shinji Suzuki. It’s a great read about bonsai and cultural craziness in a personal style that reveals Michael’s humanity and intelligence (with more than just a touch of folly). And, you guessed it, we just happen to sell it.

The styling progression on this cascade Shimpaku juniper by Shinji Suzuki is remarkable (you can see the whole step by step progression in our Juniper book). So is the end result. Remarkable and very unusual. Shinji Suzuki styled it when he was 24 years old. I wonder if he would do it differently now.

It’s not just the wild mixed interlocking swirls of live and dead wood…
… nor is it just the very long piece of deadwood that runs through the center like a dagger, all the way from near the top to the very bottom… nor the delicate deadwood branch the floats on top and undulates down into the very center of the cascade…. nor the 360 degree deadwood circle on the right… nor the crazy two piece trunk at the base, that lies flat on the soil with a big fist of deadwood above that, but….

… it’s all those things taken together
Nothing about this amazing bonsai is conventional, except maybe the pot and the stand. You might say the the foliage pads are somewhat normal for a cascade juniper, and that may be true, though you might take another look at their very open spacing the way they interact and move with and against the deadwood.

A not particularly eccentric bonsai. This powerful and tranquil old Needle juniper is probably Shinji Suzuki’s best known tree. It originally appeared on the cover of Bonsai Today issue 63 and also appears in the gallery section of our Juniper book.

Shinji Suzuki
Is world-renowned for his bonsai, both conventional and unusual. If you are interested in learning more about Mr. Suzuki check out Michael Hagedorn’s excellent book; Postdated; The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.

We borrowed this magnificent Sierra/Shimpaku juniper from Michael Hagedorn Crataegus Bonsai site. Michael is the author of Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.

Reworking a remarkable Weyerhaeuser Juniper
Here’s what Michael has to say about the tree above: “A rangy juniper reworked in a half-day refinement session at the Weyerhaeuser collection in Federal Way, Washington. This 40″ (102cm) tree is a collected Sierra juniper grafted with shimpaku.” You can see the whole post here, which includes the before shot.

Freeze Dried Roots
The roots below are from the bonsai4me website. The comments are Michael Hagedorn’s.

“We’re having a week of overnight freezes here in Portland, Oregon following a few days of bright sun and drying winds. The pots are—for once—drying out.

One of the most dangerous things about freezing weather for bonsai is dry soil. Pots breaking is truly a secondary concern. Bad root damage can occur if there is not water in the pot to insulate the roots when it freezes. Otherwise you get a double whammy—freeze dried roots.

So get out your hoses…or spot water with a can…and protect those roots. If you have frequent freezing in winter storage, then watering should be more frequent than you might think. Freezing has one other side effect…it dries out the soil.

In Japan, Mr. Suzuki would have us try to thaw out the bonsai each winter day a bit, so that we could water them. This is a bit contrary to what we hear in the west. But it makes sense.

Stay warm…”

These roots are from the bonsai4me website. The are most appropriately, the roots of a Crataegus (the name of Michael Hagedorn’s bonsai establishment).

As long as we’re on the subject of ezo spruce, I thought you might like to see this potless ezo clump from Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai.

Potless and eventually boardless
Here’s what Michael Hagedorn has to say about this planting: “I have the tree on a wooden board, which will be temporary support for about two years. After that time, I hope the roots will be solid enough (with some interior bamboo shafts) to support the entire kokedama (moss ball) and be able to be placed directly on a bench—sans pot or slab.”

Post Dated
Michael Hagedorn is the author of Post Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk and an accomplished bonsai artist and teacher. Michael lives, practices and teaches in Portland Oregon. Check out our interview with Michael here on bonsaibark.

This One Seed Juniper (J. monosperma) was collected (see below) and styled by Michael Hagedorn. Michael is the author of Posted Dated, The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. Michael lives, teaches and practices bonsai in Portland Oregon. His company is Crataegus Bonsai.

Comparisons are odious
I don’t know that the oft use phrase ‘Comparisons are odious‘ is always true, but I think there is something there. A comparison that has been showing its (odious?) head lately has to do with European vs American (or North American) bonsai. Another is Asian vs Western bonsai.

Relatively speaking…
This quote from an interview I did with Michael Hagedorn a few months back presents one perspective on our theme:

Wayne: Can you say something about Japanese and North American bonsai; the relationship and how it is evolving?

Michael: There will probably always be a parent/child relationship there. In that sense Japan is the parent of any country that is interested in bonsai, as China was to Japan long ago—and ‘overtaking’ Japan is unlikely. Bonsai work in Japan is probably evolving faster than is generally known. They are very inventive, and seem to have the best balance of holding on to things that worked well and keeping an eye out for some new way. For a traditional art this attitude works better than our ‘throw out everything with the dishwater and start again’ impulse. And so I see their work progressing steadily whereas our progression is more erratic and dependent on individuality more than community. But I’m generalizing too much. The bonsai community in North America is coalescing, and that is very positive.

Before. It helps to start with good stock. Still, it takes a lot of skill to get from here to there (see above).

I never miss Michael Hagedorn’s posts on Crataegus Bonsai. He’s always got something useful to say and he’s a natural story teller (check out Post-Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk if you’re from Missouri, or just a show-me kind of person).

Michael’s last two posts are prompted by the heat wave out west. One is a very timely tip on watering and the other is a story from his time as a bonsai apprentice in Japan.

Here’s a little teaser from the latter:
Yesterday’s ‘HEAT’ post made me remember a story from Japan…
My first year as an apprentice in Japan was a record setting heat wave. Temperatures reached into the low 100’s for weeks on end, and the humidity was wilting to those watering the trees… (go to Heat Story… for the rest of this post).

Yet Another Watering Problem…
The following is by Michael Hagedorn from his website Crataegus Bonsai.
Probably the worst thing we might encounter when we have a hose in our hand is a tree that, when we think about it, has not dried out in three days of sunny summer weather. That ought to send off all kinds of alarm bells in your head. If none go off, install some.

First of all, don’t water the tree if you want it to live. Secondly, place it in semi-shade and mist it frequently. The roots are not working, they are not drawing up moisture. Usually what has happened is root rot: the small roots got crispy dry, then they got waterlogged, and now the soil is staying waterlogged and everything that was living is slowly decomposing. This is like a heart that just stopped pumping and the medics are scrambling for the jump-start. If those small rootlets don’t start growing out again soon, the tree will die.

Tip the pot up on a block to let the excess water run out the bottom of it. The pot must be kept a bit on the dry side, and water introduced by misting onto the leaves to get the tree going again.

This is one of those cases where prevention is worth it’s weight in platinum. Don’t let your trees get COMPLETELY dry, and be ever alert to those that are not drying out as you would expect.

About Michael
Michael Hagedorn is an accomplished bonsai artist, teacher and author. For more of Michael’s insights, check out his excellent book; Post-Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk and be sure to visit his website.

This cropped cover shot of Michael Hagedorn’s Post Dated provides a powerful hint why the Publishers Association of the West choose it for a Gold Award in design.

If you been following this blog for a while, you know that we featured a review of Michael Hagedorn’s ground breaking book and a two part interview with Michael in February. Since then, my enthusiasm for Michael’s fascinating bonsai and life adventures in Japan, hasn’t wavered a bit. It’s still a great book and I still recommend it with the full confidence that you will enjoy it as much as I have.

The award in PubWest’s own words

It is my great pleasure to inform you on behalf of the Publishers Association of the West that Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk received a Gold Award in the 2009 PubWest Book Design Awards Short Stories/ Poetry/Anthologies category. I want to thank you for entering our contest and congratulate you on your award-winning book!

The PubWest Design Awards were developed 25 years ago to recognize superior design and outstanding production quality of book. We feel this is an important program to the PubWest organization and the publishers who contribute to it, as well as to the larger publishing community. It allows all of us to see trends that are coming into the publishing world, and it gives those in the design and production areas an opportunity to see what our peers are doing.

Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk
By Michael Hagedorn
Published by Crataegus Books, Portland Oregon
Distributed by Stone Lantern
Softcover, 216 pages, $14.95

This is the second and final installment of our Michael Hagedorn interview.

Do you collect wild trees? Any advice if you do?

I do collect. And I would definitely advise studying the techniques of taking wild trees with a very experienced collector who has a high success rate. Studying this seriously is better than learning by mistake and experiment—enough have done that already!

The tree pictured above is Sonoran scrub live oak (Quercus turbinella). Michael says of this tree: I collected this oak from a mountain range in eastern Arizona in 1999, at around 5,000 ft. It was growing much like old pines or junipers along rocky breaks, in a ‘captive root’ situation. There were fine roots in a pocket of soil on bedrock. I cut the anchor root, lifted the tree, and it went into a small box. The oak from the start was very vigorous, and one or two years later was in a bonsai pot. The photo is from 2008, prior to its trip to the National Bonsai Show. Accent is a small sculpture that I made in college. The container is from my past life as a potter. To see more of Michael’s trees, visit Crataegus Bonsai.

What are your favorite trees to work with? Have you done much with local varieties?

Mostly working with native trees now, at least in the conifer group. In Japan I used to get out of bed in the morning for Japanese maple and stewartia, and I still work a lot with those. I like juniper quite a bit too, for its abstract qualities. Otherwise, as a rough sketch, I have Engelmann spruce, mountain hemlock, and various native pines and junipers in my backyard.

Do you still make your own pots?

Have not made any since returning from Japan. Still, I often see a tree in my backyard and think, ‘What if I had a pot like this…’ so it might come back in a small way, someday.

Do you have plans for any more books?

Yes, I’m working on something now, not stories and essays this time but about bonsai. Still too early to say what it is exactly, but I’m writing.

You have a chapter entitled “Through a Wash of Zen” that I enjoyed very much. My assumption is that to write this, you must practice Zen. Am I correct in this assumption?

I did meditate some in Japan, but am not a Zen practitioner in any consistent way. It did prove to be a useful tool in that stressful environment. Japanese culture and Zen seem well suited to one another…

Do you miss Japanese food?

Some things. I really miss the bento box we got every noontime. It came on a tiny truck that would be outside the studio about 10 every morning. I still remember the oscillation of that truck, and running out to meet it. The bento was perfect: a good portion of rice, some fish or meat, and a cornucopia of vegetables. It was just the right size and impossible to overeat.

The Japanese actually did many things intelligently this way, for example, there was no super-sizing of portions in the fast food restaurants (which are popular.) I was not a Japanophile, loving everything about Japan, but many things they did admirably. Food was one of them. And yet some of the crazier stories from my apprenticeship seemed to be about food. If raw horse is not your cup of tea—well, it was not mine either—but if you’re curious about that culinary adventure, it is detailed in Post-Dated.