The Bonsai Board: Mark Fields

Mark Fields working on one of his bonsai

The National Bonsai Foundation (NBF) is lucky to work in tandem with many other organizations dedicated to promoting the art of bonsai. In fact, each year the presidents of the American Bonsai Society (ABS) and Potomac Bonsai Society (PBS) are recognized as ex-officio members of the NBF Board of Directors. We are excited to introduce you to current ABS President Mark Fields!

ABS was founded in 1967 to be a North American source of information, advice, supplies and material about the horticultural form and hobby of bonsai. The organization presents a merit award to an American species at the regional shows they attend. 

Fields has been studying bonsai since he was 9 years old, learning from more than 60 bonsai artists around the world. He first learned through books and experimenting with discarded shrubs from his father’s landscaping business, but Fields soon discovered Mendel Gardens, a nearby bonsai nursery.

His first bonsai teacher was the owner, Max Mendel, who critiqued his trees, gave him growing and training advice and introduced him to the Indianapolis Bonsai Club. Fields eventually served as the Indianapolis Bonsai Club president for two terms.

He later looked for bonsai education abroad – Fields spent three separate years dedicating himself to the horticultural side of bonsai in Laarne, Belgium under the tutelage of Danny Use at Ginkgo Bonsai Nursery.

At the suggestion of bonsai professional Bjorn Bjorholm, Fields’ self-proclaimed “sensei,” he visited multiple nurseries in Japan, including in Omiya Village, the site of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s Sister Museum: Omiya Bonsai Art Museum. Fields soon returned for a five-week program at Kouka-en, where Bjorn had apprenticed and was the resident artist. 

Fields owns a nursery in Indiana called Bonsai by Fields, LLC, where he annually hosts professionals like Bjorholm for bonsai workshops. You may have seen Fields at the yearly Brussel’s Bonsai Rendezvous, an event he seldom misses. He also teaches, sells and judges bonsai around the Midwestern United States and built a new bonsai studio in 2018 after retiring as a landscape contractor. 

Fields first visited the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in the early 1990s and has since returned several times. He has assisted in multiple fundraising appeals to support the Museum. He said he is looking forward to driving donations for the Museum’s upcoming renovations. 

Fields’ visit to the Museum with his son. Pictured, left to right: Dr. Richard Olsen, Lincoln Fields, Mark Fields, Robert Hoffman, Scott Aker, Michael James and Jim Hughes

Fields recently traveled to the Museum again for a tour with multiple Foundation and Arboretum staff members. He brought with him his 12-year-old son, Lincoln, who has been a budding bonsai artist since he was 4 years old. 

Before becoming president, Fields had previously served on the ABS Board of Directors. His years of involvement in the bonsai community positioned him perfectly to take on the leading role. First elected to the presidency in 2019 for a two-year term, he has been shaking up the ABS routine to make the organization the best it can be.

“It’s not something I ever thought I could do or be,” Fields said. 

The goal of ABS is to share the breadth of bonsai best practices and information held by their members and board throughout the bonsai community, especially in North America, he said. One method of communication is their quarterly publication, BONSAI: The Journal of the American Bonsai Society.

“I’m trying to get our base of board members and talent to write articles and share their immense knowledge,” Fields said. “I’ve written a few and have been getting a lot of positive feedback, so I will continue to do that.” 

He often pulls content from his bonsai textbook, which he wrote for the school he ran for three years, teaching students everything from beginner bonsai tips and basic botany to more advanced techniques like grafting, propagation, fertilizing and dealing with diseases.

Fields is looking to incorporate more photos of members’ trees in a gallery-type layout in the ABS Journal to share the beautiful bonsai they produce and entice readers to become members. Fields said he would also like to increase circulation about events happening at the Museum as well as about news and the history of the Museum and its trees. 

“Everyone is amazed at the national collection,” he said. “ABS should be bringing those trees and the Museum to the attention of the public. We really like the partnership we have with NBF, and I’m proud to be part of it.” 

While the ABS annual convention was canceled in 2020 and 2021, next year’s event will be held in conjunction with Brussel’s Bonsai over Memorial Day weekend in Mississippi. Keep an eye on their events calendar for more information!

Historical Tree Spotlight: Pasture Juniper

The Juniper as it stands in the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum today. Photo credit: Stephen Voss.

Bonsai are often developed from seedlings or collected from nature. But this month’s Historical Tree Spotlight features a tree with a unique cultivation story.

Jack Douthitt, a prominent Midwestern bonsai master, retrieved this juniper from a cow pasture in South/Central Wisconsin. But before collecting the tree, Douthitt spent time training the juniper in the pasture, preparing it to be dug up so the tree had time to heal and recover from Douthitt’s initial cuts. Museum Curator Michael James said digging up the tree first may have resulted in lost branches and would have prolonged the tree’s recovery.

“Trees in the ground are much more strong and vigorous – they heal quicker,” James said. “Once it’s in a pot, growth is much, much slower. Those preparations he made in the field allowed him to collect the juniper and get it on the fast track to being a bonsai.” 

Douthitt belonged to myriad local, national and international bonsai clubs, including Bonsai Clubs International, American Bonsai Society, Milwaukee Bonsai Society and Minnesota Bonsai Society. The National Bonsai Foundation recognized him in 1987 as “One of America’s Outstanding Bonsai Artists.” 

Douthitt previously studied art and architecture but deviated from that background after discovering the world of bonsai. 

“Once a painting is finished, I lose my emotional involvement with it,” he once said. “In bonsai, the creative process never stops, and the emotional involvement with it never ends.”

Douthitt’s juniper is native to the Midwest and resides in The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s North American Collection. The tree retains its small foliage throughout the year and forms both male and female cones as an adult tree. James added that some junipers naturally grow very low to the ground, crawling much wider than they do tall.

The juniper was repotted from its original rectangular pot to a more shallow, oval pot to better complement the tree’s figure. “That round shape of the pot really harmonizes with the trunk’s curves, whereas the old, rectangular edge just didn’t fit with those rounded trunks and branches,” James said.

While the tree technically falls under the evergreen category, James said the juniper’s branches cycle through a few different colors throughout the seasons. In the spring, the juniper sports lime green new buds that contrast against dark green older leaves, but the tree transforms into a deep green in the summer. 

According to James, the juniper turns almost bronze-like when the cold starts to drift in during autumn, and its leaves develop a purplish color when the tree enters a deep dormant state in the middle of winter.

Left: The bonsai in the 80s before it was donated.

Right: The juniper shortly after it was accepted into the North American Collection.

“It’s neat,” he said. “It’s a cute little tree.”

James added that the juniper tends to take well to pinching when new growths sprout in the spring. Once pinched, the tree forms a proliferation of buds and stays quite dense. 

The twisted deadwood that travels up the side of the tree embodies the Japanese concept of “shari.” Douthitt intentionally created the streak of deadwood and multiple jins, or dead branches, to mirror the harsh conditions – like lightning, sun, wind or animal disturbances – that would kill a strip of the bark in the juniper’s natural setting.

“Snowstorms or ice in the wintertime blow up against the side of a trunk, or an animal or something steps on a branch, which is going to rip and tear the bark away, naturally creating those sharis,” James said. “This one was probably done by the collector, but it could very easily have been found that way as well.”

HISTORICAL TREE SPOTLIGHT: Bald Cypress

From the cliffs of San Diego to the Gulf Coast, cypress trees can be found throughout the United States. But how did this bald cypress, or Taxodium distichum, end up in a bonsai museum? 

The late Vaughn Banting, a former National Bonsai Foundation board member, a former director of the American Bonsai Society and a former director and vice president of Bonsai Clubs International, donated the tree to the Museum in 2000. 

Banting was no stranger to plant care and garden design. His history with trees dates back to his childhood when he worked on bonsai at his family's plant nursery in New Orleans. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he studied horticulture and landscape architecture at Louisiana State University. After returning home he started a horticultural service company and founded the Greater New Orleans Bonsai Society. 

Banting’s cypress tree began as nursery stock, which is a plant that has been cultivated from a seedling or cutting and grown in a container, according to Museum curator Michael James. The stock is then planted into the landscape to grow into a full-sized tree or shrub. This particular cypress was instead destined to become a bonsai and has been in training in a pot since 1972. 

The cypress in 1976 in its first form, the formal upright.

The bald cypress, a deciduous conifer native to the Southeast United States, is often found in swamps where its roots can be fully submerged in water. One would be hard-pressed to find this particular species of cypress growing in Japan or China, because the tree would have to travel to those countries by boat or plane, James said. 

When Vaughn Banting first began training this tree, he aimed for a traditional Japanese formal-upright formation, which is the natural growth habit of young bald cypresses. But he later realized that old bald cypresses are different.

Museum curators and volunteers train the cypress in a flat-top configuration – the same style the tree sported when Banting first gifted the tree to the Museum. According to James, Banting observed the bald cypress’ unique growth habits as they matured at his parent’s nursery, which led him to create the flat-top style. 

Related Reading – Know Your Styles: A Guide to Bonsai Configurations

Banting realized that the flat-top style’s success relies on the positioning and thinning of the upper branches.

“As the trees become old and mature, they lose the triangular silhouette with a sharp apex and wide lower branch spread,” James said. “The lower branches break off over time, and that triangular silhouette of the formal upright style inverts itself. Upper branches then form a broad flat canopy with multiple apices and lower branches hold their foliage close to the trunk.” 

After nearly fifty years of training and three different training stages, Banting’s bald cypress is on display in the Museum’s North American pavilion. The flat-top configuration has become very popular, and the Museum is looking forward to the next innovative bonsai design to come our way.