Tortured for Beauty

Bonsai is an old art practice by the Chinese and Japanese that focuses on long-term term cultivation of trees in a container to make them look like miniature old trees. Bonsai making is a continuous regular shaping and pruning of plants to the desired shape and look. A layman in me thinks that the plant is subjected to a lifetime torture to attain a desired beautiful art. There are different bonsai styles, to mimic the normal tree shapes in nature. Some of these styles are nicely portrayed by the exhibits below.

These are presented during the last Philippine Orchid Society Show at the Quezon Memorial Circle, September 2013. There are normally two locations for the show: the landscape design exhibit, which is also a contest; and the commercial booths that sell plants, ornamentals, and garden accessories and supplies.

informal upright style

 formal upright style

 windswept style

 cascade style

a formal setting arrangement of bonsai in a landscape design

a pile of cut tree trunks and branches make a beautiful background

It was a very elegant formal design, that looks like a front door landscape. There was even the steps leading to the main door, partly open to show the welcome entrance. The bonsais are placed on some elevated cylindrical pedestals to provide beauty and balance. But everyone is mostly impressed with the pile of tree trunks and branches, cut into equal lenghts and piled in a very organized mix depending on the diameter of the trunk. It literally exemplifies a very organized chaos, and very beautiful. 

Fertilizer Friday