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Julian Adams clearly remembers seeing a bonsai for the first time. Wandering through a botanical garden as a young man, he stumbled upon a room filled with tiny old trees among orchids, cacti, and acres of vegetables. Adams says he’s always respected the old stuff. Something about bonsai struck a deep chord for him. “They changed the way I perceive things,” he says. Shortly after this fateful visit, he received his first bonsai as a Christmas present. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion that took him from studying radar technology and selling cars to managing Adams Bonsai to a kindergarten he called a “crazy hobby”.
Adams grew up in Virginia before leaving to study engineering at MIT. His childhood was very different from what he found in Cambridge, where he first tried pizza and Chinese food. While most of his college peers had studied differential equations in high school, he had never taken calculus. He describes his first year studies as “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Adams says what saved his academic career was when he led the fraternity brothers and crew as coxswain, who helped him learn study skills. “I learned that I enjoy working with people towards a goal,” she says. Although his lessons continued to be difficult, Adams found them fascinating. He focused on electronics, communications and radio technology and put those skills to work after graduation by doing radar defense work. But he soon realized he missed Virginia and eventually moved to Lynchburg to work at his father’s car dealership. “It was people problem solving, not technical problem solving,” he says.
After his bonsai Christmas gift, Adams spent 18 months practicing and experimenting before entering the bizarre world of the bonsai market. An art that has been studied and refined over the centuries, bonsai dates back to sixth-century Japan and involves shaping and caring for a miniature tree that mimics the full-scale plant in its natural environment.
“It started with an absolute little hobby,” he says, “but when you plant them, they’re like seeds, they grow and grow.” He started by reading as much on the subject as he could, then sought out mentors to teach him more about the technique and science behind the art. The bonsai garden was like a private biology lab for experimenting by trial and error, testing hypotheses and observing what made their trees happiest. He soon began traveling to conferences and hobby meetups; It has become a source of advice for other novices specializing in bonsai pines. “At one point I realized I had too many plants to take care of,” she says. When he put them on sale, he was surprised how quickly he found a buyer, and Adams Bonsai was born.
Today, Adams prefers to grow his trees from seeds or cuttings, to pay special attention to the taper of the trunk and the position of the branches, which are key to achieving the “old” aesthetic of bonsai. He says the target is a living plant that thrives despite the limitations of its pot, “grown to represent as a miniature an old tree that might have existed somewhere in nature.” But achieving this goal takes time, patience and careful work. Each tree should be watered daily and fed weekly and carefully monitored for possible pests or diseases.
“I like to say that bonsai is 50% art, 50% gardening, 50% philosophy,” he says. The application may be based on horticultural science, but focuses on applying that science through experimentation and exploration in a practical setting – very similar to the way engineering applies mathematics, chemistry or physics. “There is a need to do useful things among us engineers,” he says. “The way I think about bonsai is probably the way most engineers think about their field. There are basic skills, yes, but how can you use these skills in the world?”
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