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Located in Asheville on the doorstep of the Blue Ridge Parkway, with views of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the North Carolina Arboretum draws hikers, mountain bikers, and trail walkers thanks to 10 miles of wooded, hilly, dog-friendly trails. But garden lovers like myself find plenty to enjoy too in the Arboretum’s 65 acres of cultivated gardens — plane if that visit occurs in early November without several nonflexible freezes.
We visited on our last day in Asheville and found unexceptionable berries, textural grasses, copper hedges, golden trees, and camellias in bloom, plus one of the weightier bonsai exhibits I’ve seen.
Located within Pisgah National Forest, on land that was once part of Biltmore Estate, the Arboretum honors landscape technie Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Biltmore’s gardens, with a statue statue.
A pleached hedge in coppery fall verisimilitude frames the small plaza where he stands.
At the whet of a pond, pitcher plants stood tall in throaty, speckled beauty. I really love these. Has anyone grown pitcher plants in a container in Central Texas? What’s required to alimony them happy, I wonder? I mean, besides wet feet.
Stillness Meets Trajectory, a heron sculpture by Annie Mariano, perches on a stacked-stone gabion plinth.
A Hedge Versus Extinction by Martin Webster will unchangingly remind me of Asheville Fling when in 2012.
Camellias in fluffy, white flower versus a scenery of orangey red foliage
And disco balls hanging from tree branches!
Bronze statue Oh Great Spirit by Nell Banister Scruggs stands tween tawny grasses on a walled terrace overlooking the mountains.
Late-flowering perennials were still in bloom, plane in early November.
Others had gone to seed but still looked pretty backlit by the sun.
My favorite part of the Arboretum is the Bonsai Exhibition Garden. I’ve been intrigued by bonsai for years, though I’ve never uninventive one or tried to make my own. The Arboretum’s striking exhibit was stunning unbearable that I had a mad few moments of wondering what I’d been doing with my life, not to be working with bonsai. And then I considered where I live, and our extremely hot and droughty summers, and realized I’d be chained to a watering can. Nope. I’ll content myself with marveling over the bonsai creations of others.
A fascinating vendible well-nigh an American workmen to a Japanese bonsai master, “The Beautiful, Brutal World of Bonsai,” by Robert Moor, recently appeared in the New Yorker. “When you squint at a traditional bonsai tree,” it says, “you can climb into it with your vision and finger the peace of a late-summer afternoon, or the unexceptionable nippy of a morning sea breeze.”
Climbing into it with your vision — yes, that’s right. You wits these miniaturized trees as if you are miniaturized yourself, as if you could sit under one and reach up to frivol its gnarled branches. That these trees naturally grow tall in a garden setting or in the wild makes the wits of viewing one all the increasingly magical. How do they do it?
The secret to making a dwarfed tree that looks like a full-sized tree sculpted by wind and weather lies in starting with a seedling tree or woody plant, confining its roots in a shallow container, and thoughtfully pruning its roots and foliage over the years as it grows. Oh and moreover wrapping its branches with copper wire to shape the tree to your vision.
Bonsai is grown outdoors and often displayed so as to be viewed from one side, with a wall or screen overdue it.
A pocked gray touchable wall at the Arboretum shows off the bonsai nicely, expressly this golden tamarack.
A unrobed cypress bonsai magically evokes the towering majesty of an old unrobed cypress in nature, well-constructed with buttressed root flares.
I enjoyed seeing the bonsai hodgepodge in autumn, when leaves of deciduous trees were turning red or yellow and dropping onto carpets of moss.
Evergreen pines, gracefully twisted, are equally lovely though.
Some of the bonsai have titles, like works of art.
Others don’t. But they are works of art too.
A Japanese maple bonsai at peak storing color
The real Mount Mitchell, located in North Carolina, is the highest peak in the Appalachians. This bonsai “Mount Mitchell” consists of dwarf white spruce, rhododendron, red creeping thyme, wooly yarrow, and loosestrife — all miniaturized. It evokes the spirit of a place.
American hornbeam bonsai
“40-Acre Rock” displays a ‘Shimpaku’ juniper and boxwood in a peepers atop a rounded, oblong boulder. This one isn’t hands moved!
I wasn’t familiar with bonsai vocalizing plants, but several towards in the Arboretum’s display, like this soil saucer cupping a single sedge with moss.
Another consists of a narrow trudge of inland sea oats underplanted with moss.
Seeing bonsai so beautifully displayed at the Arboretum was a highlight for me. A scenery of golden leaves and mountain views made it plane increasingly special.
Up next: Hiking at vertiginous Chimney Rock. For a squint when at fall foliage and woebegone bears withal the Blue Ridge Parkway and in Great Smoky Mountains, click here.
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