by Beth Keating
Theme Park Life
DisneyBizJournal.com
July 2, 2024
For many, many years, our youngest son has been intrigued by bonsai trees. Maybe it was the steady diet of Japanese anime and Pokémon as a small child that influenced his fascination with the miniature works of art. It surely wasn’t a love of gardening, because he had no use for poking around the vegetable garden with me, pulling weeds or deadheading flowers. But every year at the EPCOT festivals, he would peruse the marketplace booths at length, deciding which tiny tree he wanted to bring home.
Alas, no amount of begging was going to help. Back then we were flying home, and there was no way of getting those little treasures onto a plane.
Fast forward to today, and the little boy fascinated by bonsai trees is now grown up, and doesn’t need my permission to buy things anymore, nor is he flying home on a plane. On a recent shopping trip at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in the Japan pavilion, he came across a kit that allows you to grow your own bonsai tree from seeds. Did he buy it? Yes, yes, he did. And there is now a small gardening dish on our windowsill with a hopefully soon-to-emerge miniature tree that needs daily tending.
The kit was $15.95, and came with the seeds, special bonsai potting soil, a cute little growing container to start your seeds, pebbles, and an instruction booklet. The set comes in your choice of Black Pine, Red Maple, Dwarf Juniper, or Miniature Elm. Sonny boy selected the Miniature Elm. The kit comes with multiple seeds, which, down the road a bit, will be sorted out once they reach a certain size to allow the extra seeds to be transplanted into their own pots, with the healthiest single sprout remaining in its original pot to begin its horticultural journey.
Bonsai, for those whose talents don’t bend toward gardening and nature, is an ancient Japanese art that cultivates trees with enormous patience and care, training the tree into miniature forms that not only mimic their full grown cousins, but also reflect Japanese concepts, such as balance and harmony. Because it takes so long to grow these specimens, the trees are often prized possessions that are passed down from generation to generation in a family. These are slow-growing plants that take time to reach their final forms, and enormous fortitude to painstakingly train the tiny leaves and needles over the decades!
If you aren’t visually familiar with bonsai, the Japan Pavilion is filled with stellar examples of the artform during the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival each year, thanks to the Bonsai Societies of Florida. Several dozen small trees are displayed throughout the Japan Pavilion, both along the waterfront, and along the koi ponds on the terraced area. Next to each plant is a small sign, crediting the patient gardener who cultivated and presented the specific tree, and listing the type of cultivar, the age of the plant, and how long the plant had been “in training.” (Many trees were in the 20 year old range or more!)
It requires much serenity to grow these delicate masterpieces, and if you are looking for some serenity yourself in the midst of a crowded festival day, the Japan pavilion offers a chance for a little peace and quiet. At the risk of giving away one of our favorite hideaways, there are shaded tables at the top of the Japan terraces, and you’ll be looking out over the ponds while you rest up. Along the way, you’ll pass these amazing bonsai creations, but only during the Flower & Garden Festival. They are, after all, on loan for a limited time.
Here are just a few of the gifted gardeners who brought their trees to this year’s Flower & Garden festival, and what they were working with:
• Reggie Perdue, with an Informal Upright style Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum), tree in training 20 years.
• Joshua Brown, with a Hollow Trunk style Chinese Elm (Ulmus parvifolia), tree in training 20 years.
• John King, with an Informal Upright style Dwarf Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria ‘Schilling’s Dwarf’), tree in training 18 years.
• Robert Kempinski, with a Raft style Headache Tree (Premna obtusifolia), tree in training 16 years.
• Mike Blom, with a Cascade style Brazilian Rain Tree (Pithecellobium tortum), tree in training 11 years; and a Slant style Water Jasmine (Wrightia religiosa), tree in training 10 years.
• Jesus A. Brito, with a Slant style Bottlebrush Tree (Callistemon), tree in training 7 years.
Kudos to these gardeners, and thanks for sharing your skill with the guests of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival. Just hope my son’s bonsai seeds can go that distance! Wish him sunny days, and much perseverance.
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
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