Youth with huge bonsai collection

BY our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, April 30: The origin of Bonsai-tray planting dates back to thousand years in Japan. This art of shaping and modifying big trees into their miniature avatars is not prevalent in this part of the world because of many reasons, like lack of specified courses and awareness drives.

Nizam Boro, a local youth, can be called a trend setter in this field. His passion of growing trees led him to discard the idea of government jobs long back. For seven years he has been growing bonsais. He is proud to have grown as many as 800 bonsais. He claims that his is the biggest collection anybody ever had in the state.

“I’ve been staying in close proximity with ture since childhood. I began to take interest in grafting of plants thereafter. Bonsai allured me at the later stage. It grows under one’s own hands,” Nizam said.

“Saplings are given shapes to bonsai sometimes. Usually, plants of 10 to 11 years of age are planted on trays to give them the desired curves and designs. The idea is to make a giant tree into a miniature form. The perfect bonsai has to appear rugged and old. Wiring instead of cutting branches is done to give the bonsai desired shapes. Wiring helps in pulling the branches to different directions to the plant beautiful,” he added.

Nizam’s collection varies from coniferous — black and white pine, juniper, spruce, deciduous-maple and oak; and those locally available ones like bokul, jamun, silikha, guava, mango among others.

Nizam stylized the bonsais in different forms according to trends and needs. He said that mes usually go the way they look like that of cascade and semi-cascade where the tree will look like a waterfall, formal upright, informal- upright, banyan shape, slanting, wind-swept, turtle back, forest bonsai, exposed root, literaty, root over rocks etc.

“To deal with this love of art and tenderness is equally necessary with patience. An artist also requires observation of plants to shape a bonsai. Sometimes an acute observation of a landscape becomes necessary to give it a miniature form. The art is called Penjing. In this art the artist gives a real landscape inhibiting trees, bridges, rocks, hills etc., to miniature forms on trays, rocks etc,” Nizam added.

Specialized instruments like knob cutter, concave cutter, copper wire, aluminium wire, nice cutter, branch cutter and leaf cutter are necessary for making bonsai. “Instruments help in a big way in giving the correct shapes to bonsais. The knob cutter is not available locally. I bought it from Delhi,” he said.

Nizam is also providing training to make bonsai to five people this year in his nursery. The trainees are generally grown up people and one of them comes all the way from Barpeta. “Generally, it takes 3 months to learn the course. It varies person to person,” he said.

Nizam took part in the recent agro-horticulture exhibition among others with his huge display of 1,000 bonsais. “People have been enthusiastic to buy bonsai so far. It stays on. A bonsai can be passed on to generations,” he said.