George Gracey, Bonsai-Meister

February 10th, 2005

   To this day, George Gracey can’t say what fascinated him so much about the scraggly little evergreen in the skinny brown pot.

George Gracey, bonsai-ing in his earlier years.

   It was the week before Father’s Day in 1979, and Gracey and his wife, Wanda, were poking around Highland Gardens in Lower Allen Twp. when the juniper reached out and charmed him.

   “A bon-sa-eye, eh?” Gracey said, eyeing the plant’s label. “Kinda neat.”

   A week later, the plant showed up as a Father’s Day gift, along with a beginner’s book on bonsai.

   Next thing Gracey knew, he was hooked on bonsai – the Oriental art of pruning potted plants to look like miniature versions of mature specimens.

   “I didn’t even know how to pronounce it,” says Gracey of New Cumberland. “I only had that juniper for a year or two before it died. But it was long enough to develop some interest. I’ve been a nut at it ever since.”

   Gracey, who turns 82 next week, has gone on to become one of the region’s most respected bonsai-ists.

   He’s taught bonsai classes, been a director of the American Bonsai Society, exhibited his works everywhere from national bonsai symposiums to the Philadelphia Flower Show, and co-founded the local Susquehanna Bonsai Club along with Jim Doyle of Nature’s Way Nursery in Linglestown and the late Cliff Woodall.

   You’d never picture him as the guy with the “4BONSAI” license plate.

   The stereotypical bonsai expert is that of a stone-faced Chinese man, dressed in a white satiny robe, solitarily snipping away for hours like some kind of botanical monk.

   Gracey is anything but that. He’s an amiable, outgoing, gray-haired, bespeckled lifelong New Cumberlander who favors cardigans over silk robes and says things like, “I’m not an artist. I just like to grow stuff.”

   So why do Gracey and bonsai fit so well together?

   “That’s a good question,” Gracey ponders. “I tried a lot of hobbies… tropical fish, mechanical kits that you put together, model trains… but when I got to bonsai, that was the most satisfying. I think you have to like to grow things. That has to be part of it. It’s also something that you can sit down and fool around with and have immediate satisfaction.”

   Not that you’ll have a finished product in one sitting. A bonsai can take years to refine and is never really done.

   Some of the most valuable are hundreds of years old and worth millions of dollars.

   None of Gracey’s 30 to 40 bonsai plants are nearly that old or valuable, but he does have one unusual 2-foot Siberian elm tree with a gaping hole in the middle of its miniaturized trunk.

   “It’s very rare,” says Gracey. “I’ve only ever seen one other like it.”

   This time of year, Gracey’s collection is tucked away in a sun porch kept above freezing by a pair of portable heaters. Even normally winter-hardy plants like junipers, falsecypress and pines can’t survive a typical Pennsylvania winter when their roots are protected only by a skinny ceramic pot.

   “My wife fixes this up in the summer,” says Gracey, pointing around to what now looks like a one-room garden center. “I chase her out in winter.”

   Around Easter, the collection moves outside to the official bonsai display area, also known as Gracey’s back yard.

   Rather than the obligatory yew hedge and daylilies, Gracey’s yard has a wooden fence as a backdrop along with shelves, pedestals and stands around most of the perimeter. Bonsai plants go on top of each platform, and stone-covered beds are underneath.

   It all looks very much like a display at a bonsai show, save for the bamboo matting.

   Gracey’s collection includes a variety of plant species.

   One of his favorites is a bonsai trident maple tree, which has the form and proportions of a 50-year-old tree but is less than 3 feet tall.

   “It gets these really nice red leaves in the spring and then turns golden red in fall,” says Gracey.

   He also has a couple of pink miniaturized crabapples that bloom in spring, a neatly layered juniper that spills down the side of a pot, and a mini forest of seven dwarf Hinoki cypresses, including real moss to mimic a forest floor.

   Most of Gracey’s bonsai plants are baby saplings that he trains from scratch. It’s nothing for him to drive 5,000 miles a year going to various bonsai workshops, bonsai nurseries and bonsai society meetings and symposia.

   Sometimes he’ll find a great bonsai candidate in the reject corner of a garden center.

   A couple of his bonsai junipers, for example, started out as plants that were accidentally run over by a truck while being unloaded at Highland Gardens.

   “They bonsai-ed ‘em for me,” says Gracey.

   Gracey’s also been active over the years in the Garden Club of the West Shore and the Harrisburg Area Civic Garden Center, which last year awarded him its annual Civic Award for outstanding service.

   In his pre-bonsai days, Gracey was manager of office buildings for the former AMP Inc., a school director when the West Shore School District was being formed and a member of the New Cumberland Borough Authority.

   “He’s doing something all the time,” marvels Doyle, program director of the Susquehanna Bonsai Club. “He’s not just known locally for bonsai, he’s known nationally. I hope I have his energy when I get to be that age.” 

SIDEBAR

   Some bonsai words of wisdom from New Cumberland bonsai-ist extraordinaire George Gracey:

   * Junipers make good beginner plants. “These are very forgiving,” says Gracey, “even if you forget to water for a couple of days.”

   * Bonsai plants are best grown in coarse, well drained soil in shallow trays with drainage holes.

   * Watering is critical. “You’ll usually need to water them daily outside,” says Gracey. “Inside in winter, you might be able to cut back to once every two weeks.” Check them regularly to be sure.

   * Bonsai plants are best taken outside spring through fall where they’ll benefit from the natural sunlight. Bring them inside in a cool, bright place over winter where temperatures won’t drop below 25.

   * Most bonsai plants need to be repotted and root-pruned every few years. Root-pruning helps control the plant’s size.

   * Young branches can be trained using pliable wire. “Usually the wire is OK for about 3 months before you have to worry about it cutting into the bark,” Gracey says.

   * The key to a great bonsai is making it look like an old tree in nature. “Bonsai makes you look closely at trees and appreciate them more,” he says. Books give tips such as how to prune to make a tree look windswept or how to use lime-sulfur to make a dead branch look weathered.

   * Spring is when you can expect to do the bulk of your pruning and pinching. That’s when plants grow fastest.

   * If a plant isn’t working out the way you like, “just let it alone for awhile,” says Gracey. “Someday you’ll look at it and realize, ‘Gee, this will really make a good cascade,’ or ‘If I take off this branch and that branch, then I’ll really have something.”

   * Expect to spend a lot of time on care. “Bonsai is every bit as much work as people think,” says Gracey. “They’re as bad as pets.”

   * Don’t give up if your plant dies. “Anyone that does bonsai and says he’s never killed a plant is a liar,” says Gracey.