Top 3 bonsai states in us?

Smoke

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Is this thread just about California artists ?

keep it green,
Harry

No not at all, but I think it sheds a lot a light on why California has such a great bonsai culture.

First of all California has a long history of bonsai dateing back to 1917.
Second, many of the old gaurd bonsai advocates that traveled the nation spreading the word of bonsai came from California.
Third, California contained the largest concentration of Asian Americans that came here from Japan with a background in the bonsai arts.
Fourth, due to bigotry after the war, it was these Asian Americans that migrated to loves of landscape maitenance and nursery ownership due to not being hired by mainstream Americans.

Now I don't care how you divide up 2nd and third it makes no difference to me. It is a more recent thing anyway. Yenling mentioned Oregon becoming a hotspot in the future. That may be as far as material goes. They do have a monopoply on pulling a lot of crazy material out of the forest. that material is distributed all around the United States. It becomes diluted.

On par the largest concentration of active participants of bonsai as well as the largest concentration of semi world class trees is in California. It has been that way for Sixty years and continues today. Any other state in the Union will have a long ways to catch up and surpass that legacy.

So yes...there are pockets of talent here and there around the country, and I would never think to diminish any accomplisments of any artist. But it is not comparable to consider a state worthy with one master artist.

If Marco were to move to Oklahoma tomorrow would that elevate Oklahoma to no. 2 on this list by that one action?

Having Ryan Neil and Michael Hagadorn move to Oregon means they have two new teachers but still lack the resources to teach beginners, have a convention, or boast 58 active clubs state wide as well of those clubs and study groups not under the GSBF umbrella.
 

greerhw

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No not at all, but I think it sheds a lot a light on why California has such a great bonsai culture.

First of all California has a long history of bonsai dateing back to 1917.
Second, many of the old gaurd bonsai advocates that traveled the nation spreading the word of bonsai came from California.
Third, California contained the largest concentration of Asian Americans that came here from Japan with a background in the bonsai arts.
Fourth, due to bigotry after the war, it was these Asian Americans that migrated to loves of landscape maitenance and nursery ownership due to not being hired by mainstream Americans.

Now I don't care how you divide up 2nd and third it makes no difference to me. It is a more recent thing anyway. Yenling mentioned Oregon becoming a hotspot in the future. That may be as far as material goes. They do have a monopoply on pulling a lot of crazy material out of the forest. that material is distributed all around the United States. It becomes diluted.

On par the largest concentration of active participants of bonsai as well as the largest concentration of semi world class trees is in California. It has been that way for Sixty years and continues today. Any other state in the Union will have a long ways to catch up and surpass that legacy.

So yes...there are pockets of talent here and there around the country, and I would never think to diminish any accomplisments of any artist. But it is not comparable to consider a state worthy with one master artist.

If Marco were to move to Oklahoma tomorrow would that elevate Oklahoma to no. 2 on this list by that one action?

Having Ryan Neil and Michael Hagadorn move to Oregon means they have two new teachers but still lack the resources to teach beginners, have a convention, or boast 58 active clubs state wide as well of those clubs and study groups not under the GSBF umbrella.

I thought I would answer this post, then I would just piss off a bunch of folks, so you right, California wins !

keep it green,
Harry
 

yenling83

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What would you consider a superheavyweight?

John Naka
Harry Hirao
Ben Oki
Ted Matson
Roy Nagatoshi
Kathy Shaner
Jim Gremel
Tosh Sabumaru
Mas Ishii
Mas Imazuma
Kenji Miyata
Boon Manakitivipart
Katsumi Kinoshita
Cheryl Manning
Peter Tea
John Wang
John Thompson
Hideko Metaxis
Johnny Uchida
Sze-Ernie Kuo

First tier artists from Cali.

Second string would still blow away most states.


Wow, that's an awesome list!
 
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Yep, coastal Oregon is by far the state with the magic climate. Or the upper part of Northern California, for that matter.

Coastal Oregon would be one of the worst places for bonsai; the winter wind is really bad and it rains too much there. The Willamette valley, on the east side of the coast range that includes cities like Portland, Salem and Eugene is the sweet spot in Oregon for bonsai:p
 
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This is probably interesting.
The numbers are all individual pc's that accessed my blog in the last twelve months sorted by geographic location.
it says that about 39,000 different pc's from the United States visited my blog at least once per year. Now that#s a lot of folks looking and the numbers should be highly relevant for finding the top bonsai states. I can pin this down to towns btw.

This should be a very good indicator of the bonsai density.

I was agreeing with that list all the way down until I saw Georgia beat WA? I am stunned. I don't think I know a single bonsai enthusiast from there... :eek:

(edit... take that back... after a quick google I realized they have Gary Marchal... and then read the rest of the thread and noticed there are several folks from there in this thread as well... that would explain it. But I'm still stunned...lol)

V
 
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Walter Pall

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One explanation of the Georgia discrepancy would be that one individual from Georgia erases all cookies automatically after a visit to my site and visits me several times per day. This would then come to more than one thousand clicks which are counted as DIFFERENT individuals because the system would not know the difference. Or something like this.
 
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One explanation of the Georgia discrepancy would be that one individual from Georgia erases all cookies automatically after a visit to my site and visits me several times per day. This would then come to more than one thousand clicks which are counted as DIFFERENT individuals because the system would not know the difference. Or something like this.

lol... yah... that would do it... thank you for comforting me in my distress.... ;)

V
 

Attila Soos

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Coastal Oregon would be one of the worst places for bonsai; the winter wind is really bad and it rains too much there. The Willamette valley, on the east side of the coast range that includes cities like Portland, Salem and Eugene is the sweet spot in Oregon for bonsai:p

Well, I meant the part of Oregon with the mildest climate and not too cold. I assumed that it is in the vicinity of the coast, but you must know better since you live there. Thanks for the correction.
 
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