This was cool. Probably the best place I visited on the island of Jeju. Sure there are more dramatic cliff and ocean views than this, but the serenity of this garden coupled with the history of these trees was unique. And unique is what I seek the most in my travels.
The Bonsai trees are very old but very small trees . Some age as much as 300 years but never attain anything above a dwarf image. Bonsai means "planted in a container ". This is done to artificially suppress the growth of the trees. I wonder if I could have kept my kids little that way?
There's not really much story to tell here so I'll let the pictures and videos tell the story.
Any tree can be grown in bonsai style. The trees are not genetically altered in any way, they're simply physically confined as well as chemically (fertilizer) restricted.
The art has been around for over 1,000 years originating from the Chinese and further refined in Japan. The tree is manipulated through branch pruning methods as well as bud pinching to keep the tree small. I'm sure there's a lot more to this than I can describe and the nuances are likely quite intricate.
I'm an old tree pruner myself along with a couple of my readers (the Wells boys). We used to prune apple trees for an orchard owner named Keene Morrison in Maine. I know we all wished he knew about the bonsai method so we wouldn't have had to keep moving those ladders and climbing those trees!
This was one of the stop offs on a bus tour I took with Yeha tours on Jeju island. My favorite one.
I'll leave with a few videos:
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Those pictures were truly unique the scientific process of keeping them so small. I would love to be able to keep my grandchildren at there age now. I remember many stories of the days at Keene Morrisons Orchard. A lot of good times.