Part of the Jan van Riebeeck hedge, Kirstenbosch South Africa

Van Riebeeck was born in Culemborg, Holland on the 21st april 1619. He started working for the VOC in 1636. At that time the VOC was the largest trading company in the world. Its main purpose was to carry out and maintain colonial activities in Asia. Van Riebeeck worked in different countries. He was assigned to outposts in Batavia, Japan and eventually Vietnam, where he was promoted head of the VOC trade post. Jan van Riebeeck married Maria de la Quellerie (a vicars daughter) in 1646, with whom he had eight children. Most of them died at a very young age. He eventually got called back from his position in Vietnam, because he was accused of private trading.

The Landing of Jan van Riebeeck 6th April 1652 by Charles Bell

Business went well for the VOC and more and more trading ships made the long journey from Holland to the East Indies. So they decided to establish an outpost on the Cape of Good Hope, where their ships could be resupplied with fresh water, fruits and vegetables. In 1651 Van Riebeeck received the assignment to sail out to the Cape, build a settlement and produce food for the passing fleet. Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Table Bay on April 6th 1652, with three ships full of building materials, supplies and 90 colonists. There he founded Cape Colony, known today as Cape Town. In a lot of South African cities streets are still named after Van Riebeeck, and Cape Town even has a Van Riebeeck monument.

An old postcard with the Jan van Riebeeck monument, Cape Town

One of the things the colonists couldn’t bring to Africa was livestock. They soon discovered that the local tribe (Khoi) owned plenty. Van Riebeeck tried to set up a trade with the Khoi, but that didn’t work out. The Khoi used their stock as capital instead of food. The colonists simply could not offer them anything valuable in return. For a while all went reasonably well, until the Khoi discovered that the newcomers kept steeling more and more of their land for use of farming. On top of that, the Dutch brought unknown diseases with them, which killed almost half of the tribes. This led to the first war between the colonists and the Khoi.

To protect themselves the Dutch build walls and planted defensive hedges around the land they had claimed. Along the Eastern border of the settlement they used the indigenous wild almonds (Brabejum stellatifolium ) combined with thorny shrubs. Building such boundaries was something that was done quite often in Holland, where the Graven and Heren (Counts and Earls) used canals or ditches or anything that cattle could not cross to demarcate the area of their jurisdiction.

For many these hedges planted by these early colonists symbolize the first act of what we now call Apartheid: the white South African minority cutting itself off from the rest of Africa. And deliberately keeping the best of the country’s resources for themselves. Being planted by one of our ancestors who eventually colonized almost half of the continent, we couldn’t resist bringing a few of Van Riebeecks almonds back home.

Wild almonds of the hedge planted by Jan van Riebeeck in the 1650's.

Another video of us setting up our mobile studio. This time at different locations in South Africa.

South African Bonsai master Charles Ceronio in his garden

Charles first heard about bonsai in the 1970’s, during his studies at the university in Pretoria: “My mother sent me an article about bonsai from the Readers Digest, which tickled me. At the time, I didn’t do anything with it, but it was slumbering in my brain and stayed there for many years.” Right after he married Elsie, an advert for a bonsai exhibition in Johannesburg got them curious: “It was the first in Johannesburg, as far as I know, so we drove up there to see it. That was the spark, and from there on we were always doing bonsai. At the time we had an apartment with a balcony and I had 21 trees living there. It has since always been a passion and it’s a life like for us.”

The art aspect is what attracts Charles to bonsai: “You have to design something, working with live material. You sculpt it in your mind, but it has to fit the tree. And when it grows, it gets better and better. In the fifty years you have, you need to change your tree, because branches may die, for instance. It’s a sculpture, which is always on the move and growing. It all depends on the tree and you have to use the tree to its best benefits to make the best out of that specific tree.

Charles takes in inspiration from African trees. During his first bonsai convention in Cape Town in the 1980’s, it struck him that the discussions were mainly about Japanese styles and pine trees: “But pines don’t grow in our city, because of the warmer climate. So I radically went over to a new kind of approach. I decided that our country is full of wonderful acacia’s and flattop trees. We’ve got these huge baobab trees next to that. Why not use them? I started experimenting and introducing African styles to the public, who were shocked by the idea that they should now do African styles and not Japanese styles. But some of the guys said: “It’s common sense. Why didn’t I think of it?” I think that is typical of Africa. Nowadays, most of the guys are growing South African styles”.

Spread from the book 'Bonsai Styles of the World' by Charles Ceronio

Bonsai, to us, seemed a strange hobby for a man in South Africa. Yet when Charles walks us through his garden, somehow it all makes sense. At his workbench he starts telling a story: “You know that I grew up in the high veld. There was only grassland there. No natural trees grew in the higher northern part of South Africa: You had to plant them yourself. Whenever we visited family in Pretoria we drove through the Fountain Valley. That’s a wonderful path valley with streams and trees around it. For a guy who is only used to grassland, suddenly driving underneath these trees, the plants, the waterfalls and streams was just fantastic. That kind of feeling of forest was implanted in me. So whenever I make bonsai forests now, I enjoy that feeling when trees are around you. But I have a friend who doesn’t like forest plantings, because he was shot in a forest in France, during the World War II. All the trees were torn down by fire and bombings. Whenever I showed him my work he said he didn’t like it. Only later, he told me the story, which made me realize that for some people there’s another connotation about forests.”

The first thing we had to do in our attempt to make a bonsai was to choose a type of tree. In honour of the bonsai philosophy we chose for a Dutch native species: Salicaceae, or Willow. It could actually be a Salix Alba or a Salix Viminalis. We will be able to determine it when it grows leaves. The ‘Pollard Willow’, which is made from Salicaceae, gets its distinctive shape through cutting off new branches at a height of about 2 metres, every other year. It has been around for ages and is considered as typical for the Dutch landscape. They like to have wet feet.

So we set out into the Langbroekerwetering area with biologist Bas Sprengers. Bas talked about the significance of this tree for the Dutch landscape. Not just in shape but also in function: the cut-off branches where used to make the first dike enhancements to protect our country from the surrounding water. And these willows form fertile grounds in their trunks for other types of plants to grow, increasing biodiversity by just standing there.

Jacob van Ruysdeal - Pollard Willow near lake, 1648	Pollard Willow, 2010

Because we want you to be able to see how we are taking care of the cutting (Dutch Translation: stek), we’ve put up a webcam in our studio. On our CUTTING page you can follow our progress. We’ll start by uploading a new picture every week. Stay tuned!

30 ‘Gatekeepers’ (photography professionals) where asked to send in their favorites, and now it’s up to a jury to select The Bonsai Project for the short-list (at least we hope so..).

The winners will be presented on 2nd of June in Utrecht.