Page 123 - Tài liệu Ebook cây cảnh Bonsai and Penjing

Volunteers provide invaluable assistance in caring for the 300 bonsai in the museum’s collections
as well as performing gardening tasks in its five gardens.

SPOTLIGHT ON Harry Hirao

Harry Hirao (1917–2015), a longtime friend of John Naka, was a
stalwart supporter of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum and
respected bonsai master. He was born in Colorado, educated in Japan
and returned to California where he became a pivotal figure in the
bonsai community. His contributions to bonsai in America were
honored by Prince Takamatsu of Japan and by the Japanese

Agricultural Society. His works are distinguished by strong shapes and
lines using California Junipers (Juniperus californica). In 2004, he
gave the museum a California Juniper that had been in training for
forty years. Although the trunk appears dead, there is a “lifeline,” a thin
brown line of living tissue on the underside of the trunk that carries
water from the roots to the foliage.

Harry was as interested in viewing stones as he was in bonsai. He
gave the museum six stones, three in memory of this wife Chiyoko
Alyce Hirao. These stones were collected in the Eel River in