The Brooklyn Botanic Garden celebrates 100 years of its bonsai collection

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its world-class bonsai collection with “Bonsai 100,” a new exhibition opening on Saturday.

It all started back in 1925, when landscape designer Ernest F. Coe donated a number of bonsai trees to the garden, three of which are still part of its current collection.

In honor of the milestone, the Garden has refreshed the permanent display of its bonsai collection – one of the largest and oldest in the world outside of Japan – with updated displays and signage, installed an informative bonsai film and manga-based exhibit in its conservatory’s lower level and put up an outdoor bonsai display.

“An important thing to know about bonsai trees is, they’re just trees,” said Adrian Benepe, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s president, adding that any tree can be a bonsai tree, and that they can live outdoors.

Keeping them outdoors, however, is a security risk: They require extra maintenance, are easily grabbable, and are of high value. But as part of the centennial, the Garden will maintain and circulate bonsai trees on a custom-built display table on Magnolia Plaza, not far from the main indoor exhibit.

“We're trying to show the range of plants and special specimens, and ones that are suited to this particular outdoor display for us,” said Rowan Blaik, the garden’s vice president of horticulture.

Also as part of Bonsai 100, some of the Garden’s tiniest bonsai trees have been added to the public display. The garden has about 400 bonsai trees in its collection, but the smallest specimens are generally kept in a nonpublic nursery.

They’re on display slightly above the larger trees, to prevent theft.

“It’s like bonsai sconces,” said David Castro, the bonsai collection’s official gardener, explaining that “it’s always been harder to protect those kinds of trees.”

Horticulturist Chelsea Wagner, who owns the New York City garden design company JUNIPR, said she was impressed by the garden’s collection, particularly "Fudo," the name given to one tree in the collection. it is believed to be over 800 years old but died after going through agricultural quarantine when it was imported to the United States from Japan in the late 1960s. Its remains are on view at the front of the exhibit.

She’s also inspired by the story of Frank Okamura, who became the garden’s first exclusive bonsai curator after being imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp in California, and oversaw it from 1947 until he retired in 1981.

The Garden has made Okamura’s involvement with its bonsai collection front and center as part of the centennial: The manga-based exhibit, titled “The Mountain, The Tree, and the Man,” is about his life.

The story of Okamura, Wagner noted, is one of the things that makes the collection special.

“It’s very much a story of resiliency that feels like a direct reflection of the resiliency of New York and nature,” said Wagner.

“Bonsai 100” opens Saturday, June 14 and continues through Oct. 19. Tickets to the garden start at around $25 for adults. Children under 12 can enter for free. “Bonsai 100” is included with admission to the garden.