Chicago Botanic Garden

About this audio guide

This guide to the Chicago Botanic Garden's bonsai collection introduces a limber pine estimated at six hundred to a thousand years old, once rooted on a Rocky Mountain slope and now standing in a shallow ceramic tray. It traces how the collection grew to nearly three hundred trees, and turns to Susumu Nakamura, a Japanese bonsai master who gave the garden nineteen of his own trees, each trained for decades before ever crossing the Pacific. Look closely at the trunks; every twist was a decision made by someone, sometimes a century ago.