November 23 & 24, 2014 - Larry Jackel Collected Bonsai Workshop and Presentation

Chances are the spindly one-gallon juniper you found cheap at the grocery store “nursery” isn’t why you were drawn to bonsai.  Perhaps you are the nurturing type, but not everyone wants to wait 30 years for a seedling to mature into the kind of tree that inspired you to create and collect bonsai.

Larry Jackel is here to help.  His story isn’t so different from yours. He discovered bonsai at a show in 1972. He didn’t start his collection as a bonsai professional.  He acquired knowledge by risking, participating and learning from others.

Larry and his wife Kathy moved to Denver where, for 30 years, he taught school, pouring his energies into the youth of America.  In his off time, he explored the front range of the Rockies where he collected Ponderosa (pictured), Limber and Bristlecone Pine, Douglas Fir and Rocky Mountain Juniper.  Each trip to the mountains trained his eye and with each collected tree, he gained experience with the culture of specific species.  Today he is the curator for the Bonsai Collection of the Denver Botanic Gardens.  His book “Ponderosa Pine as Bonsai” is in its second printing.  Larry’s experience with collecting and designing bonsai and teaching coalesced into a life work.

At our Nov. 24 meeting, Larry Jackel, curator for the Bonsai Collection at the Denver Botanical Gardens presented a slide show of his collecting activities and his strategy for finding and successfully collecting wild trees.  He then demonstrated his process for styling a collected ponderosa pine, creating an exciting semi-cascade which was taken home by a lucky PSBA member who won the raffle at the meeting.  He also held a well-attended and, by all accounts, highly successful workshop on November 23.