Carters In Alaska: Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection

This outdoor sculpture garden of living plants was beautiful. It is located on the Weyerhaeuser Paper Company campus. The collection includes more than 100 bonsai and about 60 are displayed at a time. I took so many pictures and then I couldn't decide which ones to post. These are only a few of the pictures I took. Some of these trees are unbelievably old. They are from Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. The placard on each sculpture notes its origin and how long the tree has been "in training". You will be able to see some of the "training" wires on a couple of the pictures. (Sorry--I still have not perfected the picture rotate thing on the blog. Some of them are sideways, but too cool to omit.)

A couple of the trees have "escaped" their containers and grown large. But they still maintain the bonsai sculpted look. The garden itself is a very peaceful place to visit and is open year round. When the weather gets nasty, they are displayed in a miniature greenhouse.

The self guided tour brochure told us that bonsai (pronounced "bone-sigh") is a Japanese word that, translated literally, means "a planting in a shallow container." The trees in the collection are cared for by a full-time curator and bonsai gardener, with assistance from volunteers. There are 6 bonsai styles listed in the tour brochure. I will put the style above some of the pictures.

There is also a rhododenndron garden at this site. But we had missed the season for "rhody" blooming.