For the love of bonsai
About six years ago, retired Watkinsville physician Roy Ward was given a bonsai tree, a small Japanese maple growing in a small pot designed to keep the tree small.
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Since then, his collection of bonsais has grown to a couple dozen trees, which he tends to in the backyard of his home along North Main Street, an old neighborhood dominated by mature trees that shade the worn sidewalks.
Bonsai is an Asian art of creating a miniature tree that over the years takes on the prized look of a gnarled, old tree.
Ward's fascination with this centuries-old skill likely is an outgrowth of a lifelong appreciation of Asian art, reflected in his collection of such art pieces. In past years, he was an avid practitioner of Japanese block art, and on one side of his private art gallery he designed an Oriental garden.
"It will take years before a single tree will age enough to be attractive," he said.
To make a selection more appealing, Ward said he began planting two or three trees at a time in one container. The Japanese, he said, might place 12 or 15 trees in one pot to create a grove.
Besides the Japanese maple, Ward is making bonsai from a tea plant and several azaleas. The trees behave as the
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