Page 72 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2016Q3

Top left; For decades in Vero
Beach, the fourth Sunday of
each month was Bonsai under
the Oaks, a free seminar that
Smith gave for all interested.
Top right; Smith styled this
enormous forest of dwarf
F. Benjamina during one of
his Bonsai Under the Oaks
workshops in 2007.
Middle left; Smith trims one of
the Portulacarias at Heathcote,
circa 2014.
Bottom; Smith defoliated one
of his Salicifolias for this photo,
circa 1990.

Coins was born and a brief career dealing in rare coins
occupied his time and provided an income. But in-
creasingly his love of botany took hold.
In those early years he flirted with cactus and or-
chids, but dreams of perfect trees in miniature soon
eclipsed all else. Durastone plastering became the
strangely named Durastone Wholesale Bonsai Nurs-
ery and by the mid-1970s bonsai had became his
His contributions to bonsai art and cultivation are hobby, his career and his refuge.
myriad. He was instrumental in creating the banyan Smith admitted that the locale played a role in his
style and pioneered the use of hardened clay particles. success—you almost couldn’t kill a plant in Florida,
He traded clippings of exotic species from collectors he said. The growing season was three to four times as
around the world, and grew them in greenhouses un- long in Vero Beach as it is in most parts of the country,
Robert Kempinski der time-controlled misting systems. and his nursery was filled with potted trees with fat
has seen trees He introduced numerous species to bonsai cultiva- trunks and spreading crowns that looked ancient but
styled by Smith in tion in the United States, including the small-leaf jade were only a few years old.
Germany, Canada, (Portulacaria afra). Several top examples of this spe- Durastone became a bonsai Mecca for novice and
cies can be seen in the Heathcote collection, including master alike. Folks would arrive from half-way across
South America, the gallery’s logo tree. the country and fill up a trailer with Banyan-shaped
India, Japan, China Smith was famous for his generosity to aspiring art- ficus, twisted-trunk Brazilian Raintree, and flowering
and many more ists, both with material from his nursery, and more trees like the Water Jasmine, Wrightia religiosa. Jim
countries. importantly, with endless hours of his time, teaching, would stop work, grab a root beer, settle in a chair
coaching and trimming trees. under the massive spreading banyan out front and talk
Born in Alton, Illinois on September 25, 1925 to trees, politics or the world situation. His personal ex-
William Arnett Smith and Elizabeth (Bettie Mary periences with war made him a passionate pacifist and
Reis) Smith, the family relocated with their infant ardent political progressive.
son to Evansville Indiana where Smith was baptized The big banyan, some variant of F. Retusa, was jok-
at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and attended Reitz ingly called “The Tree of Knowledge” by longtime stu-
Memorial High School. dents, because of all the talks that Smith gave under its
Smith enlisted in the U. S. Navy on the 6th of April boughs. He said it was never supposed to grow there—
1943; thereafter, he attended Newbury Collage as a ca- it started out in a plastic nursery pot, put its roots
det before being attached to Admiral William Halsey’s down, and burst through, growing into a massive tree
Pacific fleet aboard the USS Attu CVE 102. After the with a six-foot trunk and a crown 80 feet across.
war, Jim and Wilma married at St Benedict’s Church In the bonsai world, individual trees can be just as
on the 6th of September 1947. well known as the artist. Perhaps Smith’s best-known
Smith began his plastering contractor’s business un- tree was an immense banyan with a crown that spread
der the name of Dura-Stone Co. while in Evansville five feet across. A portrait of it hangs in his Vero Beach
before relocating family and business to Vero Beach home. A collector saw it and tried to buy it over and
Florida in 1956, where he began experimenting with over again. Smith repeatedly demurred. One day, he
the tropical plants found in Florida. said, he agreed and named a sum that he thought
The fall of the housing market in the early 1970s would silence the collector—$25,000. To Smith’s
forced Jim to turn at least one of his passions into a shock, the collector readily agreed. The amount is a
family-supporting income. Phasing out his plastering pittance for a great tree in Japan, but may have been a
business he successfully ventured into an unexpected record in the U.S.
interest—numismatics. J & W (Jim and Wilma) Rare It has been said that bonsai is the only art where the

70 | BCI | July/August/September 2016