The wooden door that leads into the bonsai shed at Donaroma’s in Edgartown acts as a portal to another world, where tiny trees line the shelves and various mudmen, miniature figures often used to decorate bonsai tree arrangements, peer from behind cupboards and in between pots of various shapes and sizes.
And at the center of it all is Ernie Carlomagno, Donaroma’s nursey manager, who was first introduced to the practice of bonsai as a teenager growing up in New Jersey.
“I was probably about 15 years old, and I bought one from a mall in New Jersey, and promptly killed it,” he recalled during a recent tour of the bonsai shed. “Then, as I got a little bit older and was driving, I took classes at Brooklyn Botanical Garden with the Great Swamp Bonsai Society in Morristown, N.J., which was a really good find.”
Bonsai is a living art shaped by months or years of careful cultivation. Some collections include trees that have been passed down through families for generations and are well over 100 years old.
“The art is the human hand at work, perhaps causing a tree a few years old to look 100 years old,” reads a pamphlet on bonsai cultivation that Mr. Carlomagno gives to customers. “To evoke the spirit of nature is the essence of bonsai.”
There are many techniques Mr. Carlomagno, now 67, utilizes to achieve this effect.
“The first thing you want to do is really get in there and show the trunk,” he said.
Long wayward branches are trimmed to reveal a tree’s initial shape, exposing ever so slowly the trunk and the branches which are the most profound and aesthetically pleasing.
“It’s always nice to put a little movement in the branch,” said Mr. Carlomagno. “And this is where it gets a little tricky.”
Often, bonsai practitioners will wrap wire around branches to mold them and achieve a desired effect — to look like a tree with branches that have been swept back by decades of ocean breezes or to pull a root system so that it can grab hold and anchor itself to a small rock.
“You’re trying to get back to the framework of the tree,” said Mr. Carlomagno. “You prune to get the initial shape, then the wire is what really defines it.”
Sometimes a branch will be purposely split or snapped, then stripped of its bark and bleached using lime sulfur as a preservative. The process is known as “jinning,” and can create twirls of deadwood that exist in tandem with a tree’s still living parts.
Mr. Carlomagno recalled when he was first learning the craft and an instructor began bending a branch on a tree that Mr. Carlomagno had been shaping. He watched in horror as the instructor twisted the branch to the point where it snapped.
At first, Mr. Carlomagno thought the tree was ruined, but when instructor stepped back to observe his work, he smiled and said, “That’s perfect.”
Mr. Carlomagno’s collection of bonsai includes over 50 trees, some of which date back to when he started working on them as a teenager.
Bonsai trees can be very temperamental, he noted. They require care and attention even when they’re not undergoing intensive re-potting, pruning or molding.
“You know, it’s a fine line,” he said. “You can have a good eye artistry-wise but have no horticultural green thumb, so you have a very pretty tree for a short-time. Or the other way, where you have a good horticultural background but have no eye for aesthetics, so then you have an ugly tree for a long time.”
For many years, Mr. Carlomagno was a part of a club dedicated to the cultivation of bonsai here on the Vineyard. The group would meet regularly to share insights with one another while developing their trees alongside fellow practitioners, and displaying them during the Agricultural Fair.
Although the club eventually folded, Mr. Carlomagno is hopeful it will return.
“I’d like to get back into it,” he said. “It’s a lot of work to run the thing. You need someone that’s organized and enthusiastic about different projects. I’ve got a younger guy that keeps asking me about it, so maybe over the winter we can pull it together and get back to the fair.”
Great to see that Ernie is still at it. I, too, miss the bonsai club. May I suggest creating a Facebook page or online newsletter to keep us bonsai folks connected with a lesser amount of work.