Seeking Bonsai in Taiwan: Part 1 (Mr. Su’s Garden)

My father is of Taiwanese heritage while my mother was born in the states. Having lived in the US for most of my life I find my self more familiar with the latter while far removed from the former. I was recently able to visit Taiwan which proved to be a valuable experience to connect with family, culture, and a country I’m unfamiliar with. And of course, an opportunity to see bonsai.

On that note I have to thank both my father and my relatives. Unable to speak the Taiwanese and with mediocre Chinese at best it was them who enabled me to find and visit these trees.

The first garden/nursery I was able to visit was Mr. Su’s nursery. Like Don Blackmond and others in the states, Mr. Su is a tree dealer. He procures trees, mainly from Japan, and will visit there 8-9 times a year to buy stock. He’s been in the business for 30 years following from his father. While the majority of his trees are comprised of black pines from shohin all the way to massive landscape stuff, his garden included different types of ficus, juniper, and what I believe are some native Taiwanese trees of which their names I do not know. The quality of his trees were superb with some well over 100 years old. By the way I’ve got some cool videos in the end so scroll through to the bottom!

Here is the man himself and his website: http://bonsai.com.tw/

 Here is a beautiful tree (no idea what it is) with well developed branching and bark. According to him, this tree won many awards at shows in the past 

A closer look. Personally I’d love to find out what kind of tree this is and if I can find it in the states. Because Taiwan has warm mild winters pretty much anything that will grow there can grow in Southern California too.

 

    

The tree was covered with these colorful caterpillars. They didn’t seem to harm the tree and they looked pretty cool

 

For the rest of my posts I will be posting one picture per tree (unless its a cool shot). I have many shots of all the trees so if you’d like a better look just leave a comment or shoot me a message specifying which tree.

Nice shohin or kifu JBP

 

Another wicked native? tree. These look a lot like boxwoods. The bark fissures are completely black. Also this tree is for sale for $10,000 USD

 

Bark too cool not to show. And this wasn’t even the best one

 

Here’s a crazy looking massive juniper from Japan. When importing trees they have to be bare rooted and incubated for a set duration. Not all trees survive the process and some that do will have damage or dieback. This gorgeous juniper is an example of that with a lot of dead branching where foliage used to be.

 

There’s no way I can annotate all the pictures, and the ones shown below aren’t even all of them. For now I’m just going to dump them here for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to ask me details about a specific tree and I’ll try my best to answer. By the way, nearly all of these trees are MASSIVE. Do not be fooled by the pictures.

The biggest ficus there. Massive trunk. Probably a 3 man tree at minimum

The last few junipers were itoigawa

 

 

 

 

 

Green Island Ficus I believe 

 

Cutest caterpillar I’ve ever seen

Some videos! I apologize for you non phone viewers. For the first videos I turned my phone sideways sometimes to capture a wider angle. Feel free to turn your head sideways on your computer for now.

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Thanks for looking through my first main post! I wanted to add more videos but unfortunately not all of them turned out well. I hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures and please leave comments+feedback.

I have much more to show later, so please subscribe to my blog via the email sign-up on the home page!