Forget Meditation Apps. I’m Binge-Watching These Bonsai Videos

"(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Ryan Neil talks about trees as if they are a source of ancient metaphysical power. He doesn’t grow them; he “engages” with them. He talks about “utilizing” them. He’s not a destination man. This is all about the journey..Operating out of St. Helens, Ore., Neil is the founder of Bonsai Mirai. The company sells a few trees on request, but its primary mission is to service those who already participate in the 800-year-old Japanese art of carefully guiding tiny trunks, by pruning and training, to grow into the wizened old trees they were meant to be..On its site, there’s a $72 pair of concave cutters for trimming your specimen, next to a $3,285 ceramic pot that mimics a pocked slab of raw basalt. The company can pack up and move a bonsai with all the precaution of transporting a painting, and it offers a boarding program in case you need someone to plant-sit your prized Rocky Mountain juniper while you’re away..But the best service it provides are Neil’s oddly compelling, members-only, how-to videos, available via subscription (from $18 a month). On camera, Neil looks like a friendly neighbor with big arms and short-cropped, silvering hair, the sort of slightly bro’d-out guy with whom you might swap home-brewing tips. He has the charisma of a motivational speaker, though instead of teaching you how to create a growth mindset, he breezily discusses “vascular productivity”—that is, the development of a tree’s stems and branches—and “foliar mass,” or how many leaves and needles it has..In a recent tutorial on how to properly defoliate a bald cypress, he waxed poetic about the importance of trimming during the tree’s “energy-positive state”—his name for the active growth period in early summer—over the calming ASMR-like snip-snip-snip of pruning shears..Full disclosure: I do have degrees in forestry and botany and can keep up with the science. But even a novice can follow along as Neil spends a full minute discussing the springtime movement of phloem inside the trunk of deciduous species. He doesn’t take himself too seriously: Neil uses big hand movements and a whoosh! sound effect to describe the shape of a tree’s growth. He’ll drop Latin names such as Metasequoia glyptostroboides and then describe its buds as “little green BBs.”.Watching him talk on my laptop screen about coaxing the hidden personality out of a potted azalea—one of two videos devoted to the plant—I began to feel the precise mood-stabilizing effect I associate with such old PBS videos as The Woodwright’s Shop or a painting session with Bob Ross. Amid a pandemic, I’d begun to see screens as an IV drip of anxiety. Yet here was a gateway to relaxation, an antidote to my helpless doom-scrolling over the past few months: unambiguous in a time of uncertainty, authoritative in a year when no one has answers..Pretty soon I was bingeing two-minute episodes on my phone as part of a beginner series on soil. Who knew that the sight of gravel being gently pressed with a bamboo pick into the interstices of the roots could be so utterly mesmerizing?.I moved to longer, more advanced episodes. A two-hour deep dive on “pomegranate styling” gave me a better idea about how to arrange branches, but Neil also made the point that our quest for the perfect shape shouldn’t blind us to a tree’s true form. You can’t force a pomegranate to grow like a pine, after all..Like many traditional Japanese art forms, bonsai is fairly prescriptive, and it’s susceptible to a rigid adherence that can make it feel inaccessible to outsiders. During the bald cypress tutorial, Neil had talked about “going solid akadama,” a seemingly unheard-of technique that uses a certain granular claylike mineral as its only soil. He admitted that it was “controversial” not to blend akadama with pumice or granite or another common nutrient. But he sidestepped any drama by saying growers should have the freedom to experiment with what works for their conditions or environment, as opposed to a slavish devotion to dogma..I found myself suddenly desperate to live in a world where the biggest controversies are about whether bonsai should be grown in a 100% red clay substrate, or whether a rough-hewn ceramic container really is the best way to showcase an aspen..More than with any meditation app, I felt guided into a sort of Zen-like acceptance that, although real growth might come at a glacial pace, it’s still important to express ourselves in the meantime. It doesn’t always take a firm hand to achieve our potential. Or, as Neil puts it: “Gotta let a tree be a tree.”.©2020 Bloomberg L.P."

Forget Meditation Apps. I’m Binge-Watching These Bonsai Videos

Bonsai Mirai’s best service are the founder’s oddly compelling, members-only, how-to videos, available via subscription.

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Forget Meditation Apps. I’m Binge-Watching These Bonsai Videos

Bonsai Mirai’s best service are the founder’s oddly compelling, members-only, how-to videos, available via subscription.

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