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Concept
Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection
Summary
The Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts is one of the premier collections of bonsai in the United States and includes a Hinoki Cypress over 250 years old.
The Bonsai Pavilion where the trees are housed are part of the complex of buildings known as the Dana Greenhouses. The collection is on display from mid-April to the end of October. As the bonsai trees are deciduous, they are held in cold storage at temperatures slightly above freezing throughout the winter.
Larz Anderson had a long interest in the horticulture of Japan. He brought two dwarf maples back from his first trip to Japan in 1889. In 1907, he and his wife Isabel Weld Perkins built a Japanese garden at Weld (now Larz Anderson Park). But it was in 1913, while Larz Anderson was in Japan as U.S. Ambassador, that the Andersons became truly enraptured with bonsai. He wrote:
About us were dwarf trees of fantastic shape and stunted plum in fragrant bloom, white and pink, and gnarled trees hundreds of years old with branches blossoming out of seemingly dead trunks in pots of beautiful form and color. Isabel and I stopped so long in this little fairy place that we had to drive like the dickens through the congested streets of endless villages to Yokohama ... in time for one o'clock luncheon.
The Andersons purchased 40 bonsai from the Yokohama Nursery Company. The company's catalogs from 1901 to 1922 are impressive documents, beautifully illustrated with colored plates, line drawings, and photographs. In a section titled "Dwarf Trees Growing in Jardinieres" the catalogs show pictures of ancient specimens of Hinoki Cypress similar to those that are now part of the collection. They are captioned "Relics of the Tokugawa Era".
The price Anderson paid for his plants is unknown, but the 1913-1914 edition of the catalog lists prices ranging from one to fifty dollars "in U.S. gold". When the Andersons returned to the US about a month later, they brought these bonsai with them and housed them at Weld.
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