A love for small things

To love plants is to enter a world that moves at the pace of nature, a beat that can be tempered but not hurried. Leaving the hot, dusty street behind you, the entrance to nursery Bonsai & Beyond, in Balmain, Sydney, stretches ahead like a long, cool oasis. Owned by sisters Isavella and Paula Valsamis, a passion for all things green is a family affair. “The love of bonsai starts with my mother,” says Paula. “She grew up in Surry Hills [Sydney] when it was full of Greek and Chinese immigrants. One day, when she was six years old, she saw a bonsai tree through the fence of her Chinese neighbour‘s house, and from that minute she was hooked.”

Neither Isavella, 50, nor Paula, 47, had planned to follow in their mother’s footsteps. Isavella became involved in the family trade through helping her mother, Tina, sell bonsai at markets around Sydney. “Initially it was just about giving her a hand at the markets but eventually it became full-time and I realised I‘d inherited her passion for it,” she explains. Paula likewise ‘fell’ into the family trade. “I trained as an architect,” she says. “I practised for 16 years before joining Isavella in the shop 10 years ago, though I had sold bonsai at Paddington markets for Mum to help pay my way through university.”

Tina Valsamis, now in her early seventies, grew up surrounded by the business of plants. “We learned at our mother’s side,” says Paula. “She never knew any other life. Our grandfather, Alex, supplied rose wreaths to Kinsella’s, the undertaker, during the 1940s. Everyone knew him as ‘Roses’. To transport them, Mum and her brother would have to walk down Crown Street in Sydney with their arms held out stiffly on either side, each one stacked with rows of wreaths.”

To seek pleasure in slow pursuits has come to be seen as a luxury. Isavella and Paula are fortunate to have been able to turn their passion into a flourishing business. “There’s nothing like taking a plant and turning it into a bonsai,” says Isavella. “You start and you can’t stop. You get so attached to each tree. When I first started, it was difficult to sell them – not knowing who they’d go to, how they’d be cared for – but I learned I had to let go.”

Nurturing a bonsai from a seedling to maturity takes at least five years, and the three women have up to 150 trees in the nursery at any one time. “We take it in turns to go on holiday,” says Isavella with a laugh. “There always needs to be one of us in town to tend them all.”

The sisters entered the field with no illusions about its demands. “When I first started, Mum would keep asking, ‘Are you sick of it yet?’ because it’s so intensive,” recalls Isavella, “but I don’t think you can get sick of it. My life is about caring for them constantly. You’re always trimming, weeding, watering and watching; they become like your pets. You do it because you love them.” For Isavella, the very act of tending each plant is a transporting experience. “When you sit down to shape a tree, it absorbs you utterly,” she explains. “You forget everything and you are living right here and now, just you and the tree.

The art of bonsai

The art of bonsai includes variations on several basic styles reflecting the appearance of trees in nature.

Bunjin (literati): Trunk or trunks grow upright, slightly slanted, and without branches except at the apex.

Chokkan (formal upright): From a vertical trunk the branches grow out in pyramid fashion and regularly in all directions except the front.

Fukinagashi (windswept): Branches grow from a slanted trunk in only one direction as if shaped by the wind. Han-Kengai (semi-cascade): The trunk and braches extend out and down, as if jutting out horizontally from a cliff, but the tip of the tree does not hang lower than the base.

Hokidachi (broom): On a straight, vertical truck, the branches fan out similar to bristles on a besom broom. Ikada (raft of fallen tree): In nature, this form occurs when several trees sprout from a blown-over tree.

Ishisuki (rock planting): Tree growing over or on a rock and whose roots grasp the rock and may grow down into the soil.

Kabudachi (multi-trunk): Several trunks grow out of the same root base that appear to be individual trunks.

Kengai (cascade): Tree and branches usually hang over the rim of a tall pot.

Moyogi (informal upright): The trunk curves in full spirals which become tighter towards the apex.

Netsuranari (sinuous root): Several trunks grow out of a single horizontal root, which gives the effect of a group planting.

Sankan (triple-trunk): Three trunks of different sizes grow out of one root.

Shakan (slanted): Similar to the formal upright style, except the trunk grows at a 90-degree angle.

Sokan (twin-trunk): Two trunks of different sizes grow out of one root.

Yose-Ue (forest): Several trees of various ages are planted in the same spot. Thus, the impression of a forest or grove is created.

Words: Francesca Newby.  Photography: Scott Hawkins.

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